To define organizational culture, people should understand what culture means in a society. In a broad sense, culture is the summation of spiritual values and material values which was recognized and formed in the historical activities of the society. In a narrow sense, culture is the ideology and the organization, rules which matched with it. But the organizational culture is different from the culture in traditional meaning, and it is the result of effect from several elements such as the awareness, character, habit of the member in the organization and their scientific and cultural level. Organizational culture is the beliefs and values that are shared and it is based on the organization, and forming with the organization or dying with the organization, it exist no matter it has been presented.
As a kind of culture which formed in a organization, organizational culture can be influenced by the managers, and that is why the organizational culture is a part of management. It is based on the organizational values, and the organizational values is ruled and controlled by the top level management. In the other words, the organizational culture is created by the top level management.
Effect of Organizational Culture on Decision Making
Since the definition of organizational culture has been gave, it has become more easy to analysis the effect of organizational culture on decision making.
There is no doubt that the decisions were made by the management in the organization, according to the definition of organizational culture, the organizational culture influence the members. Organizational culture can be divided into strong organizational cultures and weak organizational cultures. A strong organizational culture means the organizational culture can influence the organization more deeply than weak organizational culture. Whether organizational culture is strong or weak can be relate to the original culture, the scale of the organization, the liquidity of employees and the employee. As a result, a strong culture can decide how the staffs who have a unitive attitude respond to the stimulus, on the other hand, with a weak culture of the organization, staffs have different attitudes and responds. That means a same decision can make different effects in two organization if the organizational cultures are different—in the organization with a strong culture, the decision would be accepted easily, and in the organization with a weak culture, the staffs may doubt the decision and that make the decision implement hard. So, the organizational culture influences decisions by its members and the way in which it influences its members’ acceptance or rejection of the decision. That means when the manager making decision, he or she must consider more thing to ensure the decision can work out efficient.
As a organization, especially a organization with a strong organizational culture, organizational culture can limit the manager’s choices to make decision to manage his or her management function. Because the organizational culture establish the regulations about what people should do or should not do. Although the regulations are not write down, even not explicit or people do not talk about, they are exist and influence people all the time.
Decision making in organizations is accomplished by application of both the compatibility test and the profitability test, in precisely the same way as for individual decision makers. This is because the organizational culture, vision, and strategic plans are possessed by its members; there is no “organizational mind” that retains there images and makes decisions. There are many commons in between organizational decision making and individual decision making. All of the two type of decision maker must consider about environment, the whole plan of the business, and the danger. But decision making in an organization can be more difficult, because the decision can bring changes, and members of this organization may have resist or welcome two completely different attitude. In turn to conservative, nostalgia, maintain organization, people always based on past the criterion for judging now decisions, always worried in change will lose what will occur, thus to doubt and fear and changes of psychology and behavior. Conversely, in a pioneering, innovation atmosphere organization, people always with the development the judgement to analysis and decision of rationality, always hope in produce change, so eager to get what changes, welcome changes and  support changes. Obviously, welcome change of organizational culture conducive to the implementation of the new decision, and resist change of organizational culture may give any new decision-making implementation disastrous effects. In the latter case, in order to effectively implement the new decision through a lot of work, must first change organization member attitudes, establishing a conducive to change of organizational culture.