When a person moves from one firm to another

When a person moves from one firm to another, or even from one department to another in the same firm, he or she senses and experiences differences between the environments. Attempting to adjust to these different environments involves learning new values, processing information in new ways, and working within an established set of norms, customs, and rituals. The adaptation to new environments is becoming a common occurrence and is likely to remain so into the 21^s1 century. Although adaptation is difficult, it can be better understood by learning about organizational culture.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

If a person walks into the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, the Breakers Hotel in West Palm Beach, or the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, there is a certain atmosphere, feeling, and style that is unique. These hotels have a personality, a charm, a feel. They have a cultural anchor that influences the way customers respond and the way employees interact with customers.

McDonald's also sends off a powerful cultural message. The 13,000 restaurants in McDonald's network all pay attention to quality, service, and cleanliness. Ray Kroc, the founder, instilled these cultural anchors in McDonald's. He had a significant influence on what McDonald's is throughout the world, from Tokyo to Chicago to Moscow. Kroc projected his vision and his openness about what McDonald's would be to customers. He gave McDonald's a purpose, goals, and a cultural base.

Whether the discussion focuses on a grand hotel that exudes culture or a McDonald's restaurant that projects its founder's vision of the business, culture is a part of organizational life that influences the behavior, attitudes, and overall effectiveness of employees.

Organizational Culture Defined

Despite being an important concept, organizational culture as a perspective to understand the behavior of individuals and groups within organizations has its limitations. First, it is not the only way to view organizations. We have already discussed the goal and systems views without even mentioning culture. Second, like so many concepts, organizational culture is not defined the same way by any two popular theorists or researchers. Some of the definitions of culture are as follows:

• Symbols, language, ideologies, rituals, and myths.

• Organizational scripts derived from the personal scripts of the organization's founder(s) or dominant leader(s).

• Is a product; is historical; is based upon symbols; and is an abstraction from behavior and the products of behavior.

Organizational culture is what the employees perceive and how this perception creates a pattern of beliefs, values, and expectations. Edgar Schein defined culture as:

A pattern of basic assumptions—invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with the 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 correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems