Organizational culture is the behavior of humans within an
organization and the meaning that people attach to those behaviors. According
to Needle (2004),[1]organizational culture represents the collective values,
beliefs and principles of organizational members and is a product of such
factors as history, product, market, technology, and strategy, type of
employees, management style, and national culture. Culture includes the
organization's vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions,
beliefs, and habits. Ravasi and Schultz (2006) wrote
that organizational culture is a set of shared assumptions that guide what
happens in organizations by defining appropriate behavior for various
situations.[2] It is also the pattern of such collective
behaviors and assumptions that are taught to new organizational members as a
way of perceiving and, even, thinking and feeling. Thus, organizational culture affects the way people and groups
interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. In addition,
organizational culture may affect how much employees identify with an organization.[3]
Schein
(1992), Deal and Kennedy (2000), and Kotter (1992) advanced the idea that organizations often
have very differing cultures as well as subcultures.[4][5][6]Although
a company may have its "own unique culture", in larger organizations
there are sometimes co-existing or conflicting subcultures because each
subculture is linked to a different management team.