CULTURE AND INNOVATION

Culture and Innovation in Organisations



Abstract

This assignment will include a review of theories of the nature of organisational culture, including how it may impact on innovation, and how it may be affected by the leaders of an organization. This will be followed by an examination of how culture influences behaviours related to innovation and change in the organisation. Finally this assignment will include a recommendation on strategies and actions that could be implemented by my organisation leader to enhance or create an appropriate culture.

Culture and Innovation in Organisations

Nature of organisational culture

Over time culture has been blamed for many things, for example, poor performance in government organisations. The easiest way to distinct culture is through the national culture as it includes different behaviours, beliefs and values associated with different countries and nationalities. These have an implication on the management and leadership of these countries.

Looking specifically at the aspect of organisational culture, the ideas of organisational culture were borrowed from anthropologists. Writers and researchers like Brower (1966), William Ouchi's (1981), Terrance Deal and Allan Kennedy's (1982), and Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman's (1982) worked on defining culture, starting from a simple definition provided by Bower (1966) “culture is the way we do things around here”. Due to the nature of involving people and teams in an organisation, develop their own way of doing things, thus, creating a life of its own and generating widely beliefs, values and practices that differentiate one organisation from another. These can impact the organisation success or failure.

Organizational culture defined as “deep-set beliefs about the way work should be organised, the way authority should be exercised, people rewarded, people controlled and so on.” These are all part of the culture of an organisation (Handy 1985). Edgar Schein (2004) defined culture within a group as “a pattern of basic assumptions worked well enough that was learned by the group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems”. He went to describing the cultures in action, The 'Action' company, The 'Multi' company. Peters and Waterman (1982) identified the importance of shared values within an organisation. They placed the values in the centre of the 7Ss configuration and related the success of the organisation to the way we deal the 7Ss.

There are many dimensions or characteristics of organizational culture that have been defined. For example, a research study conducted by J.A. Chatman and K.A. Jehn (1994), identified seven primary characteristics that define an organization's culture: innovation, stability (maintaining the status quo versus growth), people orientation, outcome orientation, easygoingness, detail orientation, and team orientation. For example, the culture of a manufacturing company with the subculture of a marketing department which varies from that of the production department within the same organisation.

It is very important for leaders to understand the culture they operate in, so as to drive ...