leftWhat is culture? What do you associate with culture? Perhaps art and music, perhaps values and beliefs, language and communication, behaviour - in fact, culture is a collection of all of these things. Terpstra and David (1991) define culture as ‘a learned, shared, interrelated set of symbols which unite and identify members of a society’

We associate culture most commonly with nations but culture can apply to any  group of people bound together in some way, and so an organization will also have  its own culture. Within a culture, the distinctive values, attitudes, beliefs, behavioural patterns and its impact on group thinking are well understood and taken for granted. However, when entering a culture from the outside, it can pose some unexpected   and surprising challenges and constraints

Culture defines the character of an organization. It embodies the unifying values, norms and behavioural patterns of the organization. It permeates every aspect and defines the way things are done. Aspects of culture are defined and consist of written statements or procedures. However, aspects of culture are unspecified and can't formally be defined. They are such things as management style communication norms, decision making style, level of informality/formality, preferred strategies and core values for judging outcomes - things that are not set out in a rule book or in an employee handbook or on the company website

There is a great deal of focus on workplace culture and organizational development today because it is recognized that culture has a huge influence on organizational performance. A creative, collaborative and supportive environment, where people work together as a team, innovating, learning from experiences and taking pride in achieving organizational objectives, is a culture which will far outperform a culture of control exercised through procedures and management hierarchies

Culture is hard to change but it is never static. Some workplace cultures are changing faster than others, and in many cases management wish to bring about transformational change in response to changes in the business environment - changes such as global competition, de-regulation, globalized operations, new and emerging technologies, the pervasiveness of the internet and e-business. These changes in the business environment call for a workplace culture that is adaptable, responsive and agile, and organizations strive to achieve such a culture. However, cultural change is one of the hardest changes to bring about

We start off by examining what culture is and theories of culture. We go on to consider how the culture of an organization may be assessed. Noting that there is no 'right' culture, we compare and contrast different types of organizational culture and their suitability to different types of organization. We examine the important role of teams in changing culture and engendering agility, creativity and a clear focus on business objectives. We consider how strong teams can be developed and examine Belbin's model in the context of creating balanced teams

The final section of this unit focuses on managing culture and change programs. We examine change management both from the process and people perspectives. The critical role of leadership, whether top leadership or team leadership, is emphasized in culture change initiatives