The following came from an article posted by Business Insider. Please read the full article for more information.
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The Culture Show (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
…organizational culture is having its HR moment right now…articles, blog posts, seminars- everyone seems to be talking about culture! That’s why it’s especially unfortunate that we are so sloppy when it comes to what we mean by ‘culture’.
Prescriptions for how we can change our organization’s culture are tossed around like recipes, with barely a mention of what we mean when we say ‘culture’. This is not just about semantics. It’s actually really important: sloppy thinking leads to sloppy actions, and frankly, that’s reflected in too much of the current discourse about organizational culture. As a profession that still struggles with gaining the credibility we deserve, HR simply can’t afford to be so imprecise about something we claim is so important.
So, What is Culture?
Well, that’s a question that continues to be open to debate, but let’s not get existential. For our purposes we can draw on some key concepts from the social sciences that can be used as tools in thinking about what we mean by ‘organizational culture’:
- Culture is enacted: that is, culture is continuously created by every member of your organization, through their day-to-day participation in the organization. It’s dynamic, shared, crowd-sourced; not static and unchanging.
- Culture is “how we do things here”. It provides members with (largely unspoken) rules for how they should behave to gain and maintain social ‘membership’ in the organization.
- Culture is manifested in a variety of ways, including: [...read more]
The author also discusses:
- What Culture is Not:
- Why It’s REALLY Important That We Lose the Sloppy ‘Culture’ Thinking
- Let’s Avoid This Sloppy Thinking About Culture!
- Culture Must be Homogenous Across the Organization
- Having a Team Building or Social Event is a Great way to Change Culture
- HR Can Change an Organization’s Culture
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What do you think about all this Organizational Culture talk? Please comment below.
