Corporate cultures provide identifying characteristics and values for organizational members to appreciate and learn.

Cultures are distinguished by artifacts, values, and basic assumptions. The socialization process is the entry stage in an organization that provides clues about its culture. Cultures are difficult to change, yet change is necessary in some instances for survival. Organizations need an adaptive culture in order to respond effectively to the changing environment. Organizational cultures exist in all organizations, and have important effects on the morale and motivation of organizational members. Cultures are communicated through artifacts, values, and basic assumptions that are both visible and invisible. Stories are considered by some as the most effective approach to reinforcing an organizations values, and frequently involve the CEO. Values that organizations hold can be either enacted or espoused. When espoused values are not confirmed by actions, the organizational culture is weakened. Leaders have a responsibility to monitor and alter the organizational culture when necessary. Much of our concept of organizational cultures has been adapted from cultural anthropology. There appears to be distinct cultures in organizations. Organizational Culture: it is a pattern of basic assumptions that are considered valid and that are taught to new members as the way to perceive, think, and feel in the organization. Culture consists of the three levels of artifacts, values, and basic assumptions. Culture is an observable, powerful force in any organization. Made up of its members shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a comp anys well being and success. Every organization has a unique culture making it different from the other and giving it a sense of direction. It is essential for the employees to understand the culture of their workplace to adjust well.

FUNCTIONS AND EFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Culture serves four functions, including providing a sense of identity to members and promoting a sense of commitment. Culture helps organizational members attribute sense and meaning to organizational events, and reinforces the values in the organization. Finally, culture serves as a control mechanism for shaping behavior.

A.

The Strong Culture Perspective

A strong culture is an organizational culture with a consensus on the values that drive the company and with an intensity that is recognizable even to outsiders. Strong cultures can be positive or negative. For example, street gangs have strong cultures, yet they also exhibit negative characteristics. B. The Fit Perspective

The concept of fit asserts that an organizations culture is only good if it fits, or aligns itself, with the industry or the firms strategy. C. The Adaptation Perspective

Adaptive cultures encourage confidence and risk taking among employees, have leadership that produces change, and focus on the changing needs of customers. Cultures that promote long-term performance tend to be the most adaptive. Adaptive cultures facilitate change to meet the needs of their constituents.

CHANGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Organizations need to periodically reassess their cultures as environmental changes occur due to globalization, workforce diversity, and advances in technology. Mergers and acquisitions require the blending of two organizational cultures, often a difficult process. Two basic approaches to changing culture are (1) helping current organizational members buy into a new set of values, and (2) adding newcomers and socializing them into the organization, and removing current members as appropriate.

A.

Developing a Global Organizational Culture

Developing a global organizational culture requires that the values that drive an organizations culture support a global view of the company and its efforts. Conflicting

pressures of centralization and decentralization add to the difficulty of creating such a culture.

B.

Developing an Ethical Organizational Culture

An organizations culture can profoundly affect the ethical behavior of its employees. Managers must behave in an ethical manner themselves, encourage ethical behavior from their employees, and present ethical behavior as good business. Trust plays an important role in any effort to develop an ethical organizational culture.

C.

Developing a Culture of Empowerment and Quality

Empowerment requires trust between managers and supervisors and between supervisors and employees. In an environment of trust, empowerment releases the creative energy of employees and leads to increased productivity and higher quality products and services. However, in order to develop a culture of empowerment, managers must be willing to let go of traditional hierarchical notions of power.

Leaders shape and reinforce culture by what they pay attention to, how they react to crises, how they behave, how they allocate rewards, and how they hire and fire individuals. It is difficult but not impossible to change organizational culture. Managers can do so by helping current members buy into a new set of values, by adding newcomers and socializing them into the organization, and by removing current members as appropriate.

SUBCULTURE
The definition of subculture is less known to leaders of some organizations then the definition of organizational culture. Its necessary to understand that there are many local cultures in one organization. It means each culture is divided into different parts, such as levels, branches, professional, regional, national and other groups. They can coexist under the roof of general culture. If there are some differences in subculture it will be difficult to organization too. But at the same time subcultures disparities are not always a barrier to organization activity, because they can be a resource for its development. Organizing culture is a system of values of this organization. This system is included in different sides of its activity. They call it the spirit and character of organization. Such kind of organization is divided into two groups: formal and informal. They are exponent of local subcultures. Organizing culture phenomenon in its character. So, each organization has many subcultures, and it can be dominated in its own way. According to organization, subculture is able to definite as the total combinations of values, which differ one group from another in the organization at whole. We can do the classification of subcultures in different ways: 1. According to the degree of values of subculture, and organizing culture we can bold: - leading subculture. As a rule it is the subculture of the central apparatus of management, which influences the dominated culture most of all; - no conflicted subculture. It combines both dominated values and personal ones; - contrculture. The members of such kind of group do not adopt the meaning of the dominated culture. Contrculture is an example of opposition in the organization. 2. According to the kinds of subdivisions in the organization, there are: - subcultures of the local units of organization, for example, subculture of national representation of international companies and subcultures of various functional subdivisions of organization. 3. As the leaders of subcultures take part in the process of activity of this organization, we can definite subculture such as: - subculture of top-management; - subculture of directors of average unit; - subculture of ordinary employee. During the process of their development subcultures coincide with each other or become independent in their activities. The strongest subcultures can get isolated from the weakest one. Because of some managers do not pay much attention to the different kinds of subcultures, it leads to the serious conflicts inside of the company. It is bad for the organization at all and for the results of its activity. To prevent this conflicts there are some important methods. One of them is to increase the friendly contacts between the members of the staff.

If some subcultures become a threat to organization functioning, its necessary to accept the strict administrative decision to correct the situation. For example, the manager can recommended the member of company, who is the creator of contrculture, to work in other subdivision. To manage the company professionally and more effectively, director must know the subcultures of his staff. The manager must be able to form a correct estimate of the situation in his company and manage subcultures well.

CHARACTERSTICS OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Organizational culture is the unique combination of the values that each organization believes in. The more positive each member becomes within an organization, the better the organization looks as a whole. Like every person has his own style of behavior, his own personality, similarly the organization has a distinct culture. This culture may be defined as a set of all the espoused values of the organization. The culture of the organization can be tiered into 3 levels based on their visibility and how closely they are adhered to the organization. The first level is Artifacts and Behavior; Artifacts and behavior are the most visible components of organizational culture. They include the physical layout of the workplace and observable behavior of its employees. The next level is Values. Values are less visible than behavior but they can be seen as they influence observable behavior of the individuals working in the organization. But the top tier of organizational culture may be seen at the level of Assumptions and Beliefs. They cannot be actually seen, but they are so well ingrained in the employees that they come out quite naturally because that is the way the organization thinks. These are the strongest held components of culture as they are not influenced, but are evolved and affect behavior and values of employees of an organization. Thus these 3 components make up the personality of the organization - the organizational culture. An organizational culture is the outcome of both the management's initial beliefs and employees' adoption of those beliefs. Primary Characteristics: As we can see, the unique 'behavior' of an organization can be attributed to the makeup of the values that it espouses - the organizational culture. Let us understand these primary characteristics that define an organization's culture as a whole, the ones that help shape up the organization's 'personality'.

These are very general characteristics that every organization would have to look into, otherwise the culture would seem incomplete. Although all these characteristics are at some level a part of every company, the importance and individual interpretation of each differs from business to business, thus making each business unique in its own way. There are 7 primary characteristics that belong to an organizational culture. They are listed below. 1. Innovation and Risk Taking: Risk and returns go hand in hand. Places where you take a risk (calculated risk of course!), the chances of returns are higher. Same goes for innovation. You could either be a follower or a pioneer. Pioneering has its share of risks, but at times it can also have a breakthrough outcome for the organization. Thus, innovation and risk taking is one of the main characteristics of organizational culture defining how much room the business allows for innovation. 2. Attention to Detail: Attention to detail defines how much importance a company allots to precision and detail in the workplace. This is also a universal value as the degree of attention the employees are expected to give is crucial to the success of any business. The management defines the degree of attention to be given to details. 3. Outcome Orientation: Some organizations pay more attention to results rather than processes. It is really the business model of each business that defines whether the focus should be on the outcome or the processes. This defines the outcome orientation of the business. 4. People Orientation: This is still one of the most contentious issues in organizational culture today. How much should be the management focus on the people? Some organizations are famous for being employee oriented as they focus more on creating a better work environment for its 'associates' to work in. Others still are feudal in nature, treating employees no better than work-machines. 5. Team Orientation: It is a well established fact today that synergistic teams help give better results as compared to individual efforts. Each organization makes its efforts to create teams that will have complimentary skills and will effectively work together.

6. Aggressiveness: Every organization also lays down the level of aggressiveness with which their employees work. Some businesses like Microsoft are known for their aggression and market dominating strategies. 7. Stability: While some organizations believe that constant change and innovation is the key to their growth, others are more focused on making themselves and their operations stable. The managements of these organizations are looking at ensuring stability of the company rather than looking at indiscriminate growth. Just like having a strong personality adds character to a person, organizational culture does give a business its own special identity. It helps create cohesion among the employees as they share the primary characteristics of an organizational culture and imbibes in them the spirit of team work.