Organizational culture is the sum of reflects that gradually formed in the production and management practices, agreed and complied with all staff, with the characteristics of the Organization’s mission, vision, purpose, spirit, values and business philosophy, and the ideas in the production and management practices, management system, the behavior of employees with the external image. In essence, organizational culture is a cultural phenomenon among the enterprises, its appearance is inseparable from the development of the theory and practice of modern enterprise, from the management perspective, organizational culture are the application management tools to achieve management objectives, therefore, organizational culture are not only a cultural phenomenon, but also has a connotation as a management tool. First, the organizational culture is led by a sense of enterprise management, the cultural patterns of pursuit and realization in a certain corporate purposes, from a certain sense, the organizational culture is a culture of enterprise management. Second, the organizational culture is a culture that have a common goal, group consciousness, and the suitable organizations and institutions. Third, the organizational culture is an “economic culture”. It is gradually formed in the operation of the production process and management activities by the enterprises and enterprise employees, leaving the economic activities of enterprises, it is impossible to have a organizational culture formation, not to mention a good one.
The Functions of Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is immortal pillars for the development of the organization, cultural development also has the potential force of cohesion, it brought not only a spirit to employees, but also inspire them a sense of pride and responsibility, cultivating the team work spirit of the organization, thus, to improve the overall effectiveness of the enterprise.
- The guiding function: Organizational culture can play a guiding role of value orientation and behavior orientation in enterprises and each member of them. This orientation is different from a traditional management which simply focus on the rigid discipline or system, it emphasizes to guide the behavior of members of the enterprise from the shaping organizational culture, to make people accept the common values in a cultural imperceptibly.
- The incentive function: Positive ideas and code of conduct can form a strong sense of mission and a sustained driving force. Positive organizational culture is a ruler of self-motivation to the employees, the ruler that they can contrast their own behavior, identify gaps, can generate the driving force for improving. In the same time, enterprises with shared values, beliefs and codes of conduct which can be a powerful spiritual pillar, can make a person generate a sense of identity, a sense of belonging and a sense of security, until play the role of mutual encouragement.
- The cohesion function: The collective strength depends on the cohesion of the organization, the coordination of the organization’s internal condition and ability to control. The cohesion of the organization, coordination and control can be generated by “rigid connections” like the system of discipline, but not as good as more effective by “internal binder” like shared values, beliefs, and codes of conduct.
- The constraint function: Excellent organizational culture have the binding effect on the thinking and behavior of each employee. After a long period of construction of organizational culture, formed written or convention rules and regulations, ethics and codes of conduct to regulate the behavior of employees, by this measure, it achieve the controlling of thinking and behave of workers.
Take the McDonald for example, McDonald’s Quality, Service, Cleanliness, Value, it formed from the top to bottom of a company-wide to a high-spirited, energetic and promising enterprises mental outlook, the concept of health inspire and guide workers keep making progress. McDonald focus on meticulous management, cultivate awareness of staff to establish “the details determine success or failure “, to improve management efficiency through good detail, to build a strong team through good detail, use good details to regulate employee behavior, good restraints of organizational culture in the system can be fully demonstrated. McDonald also enhance their employees sense of belonging through methods such as uniform dress; strengthen employees collaborate awareness; care for each other, help each other; actively promote flexible management to encourages employees to breakthrough program of the work to form a flexible internal strengthen collaboration between employees. scientific management being taken to improve the sense of community of employees.