Aspects

Aspects of organisational culture include its origin, its importance, its location, the relation with the maturity of the organisation and the internal relations.

The origin of organisational culture is a combination of the founder(s) of the organisation, the employees, the interaction within the organisation, the stakeholders, the clients, the suppliers, the place of the organisation in the context of society, the objectives, strategy and structure and the sector (Schein). In addition, the history of the organisation should be taken into account.

The importance of organisational culture is clarified through the effect of culture on the involvement of people, the success or failure of mergers, the strategy, the structure, systems and procedures and measurement (Hofstede, Schein).

The location of organisational culture includes the organisation, the sector, the profession, the level of hierarchy, common experiences and backgrounds, relations, use of language, status, rewards, assumptions, values, key persons, stories and symbols.

The maturity of an organisation affects its culture; the older the more settled its culture is (in general) and the more difficult is becomes to change the organisation. Changing the culture is difficult, to start with because of the difficulty of grasping what that culture is (the view from the top most probably differs from that of the bottom). Furthermore, interventions (e.g. new procedures) may be realized but without paying attention to the related way of thinking they may well fail. On the other hand, paying attention to organisational culture first (however difficult) makes much of change management redundant.

Regarding internal relations, a proper organisational culture ensures integration and involvement of people, amongst others through key persons (heroes), companies myths, symbols, status, acknowledgement; `the way we do things here`.