Question

According to Edgar Schein, organizational culture are the shared beliefs and values among a group of people which influences how they perceive, think, and react in the organization. There are four types of organizational culture:

• Clan-Internal focus that values flexibility
• Adhocracy-A risk taking culture with an external focus on flexibility
• Market-A competitive culture with an external focus on profits over employee satisfaction
• Hierarchy-A structured culture valuing stability and effectiveness internally

How would you describe the organizational culture of a previous or current place of employment? And why?

Do you think this type of culture is best suited to help the company achieve its strategic goals? Explain.

Answer 1

i. The previous organization that I was a part of was a stock trading firm. Like all the other trading firms, the organizational culture of the firm according to Edgar Schein was a Market culture. The firm's main focus was to achieve the targets and make profits set by the management by employing various streams of revenue. This objective of the company lacked any form of attention towards the satisfaction of employees.

Being subject to the fortress culture, the employees were always under pressure to achieve the targets. This forced employees to seek better opportunities if they couldn't cope with the pressure. Some of them were fired for failing to achieve at least 50% of their targets.

ii. Did this culture help the firm achieve its strategic goals?

No, it didn't. The company's lack of focus on employee satisfaction influenced the employee's treatment of customers. The customers failed to receive good service as the employees performed only to meet their targets and didn't focus on solving their queries. This lead to a high number of complaints that were unresolved. Due to the increasing complaints, the customers began switching their brokers and looking for firms that offered better service. The company's revenues began to dip as a result of losing customers and now the objective was to sustain in the market. Therefore, this kind of culture didn't suit the company.