Building powerful corporate culture

A Newspaper article by Scott Bellows, an Assistant Professor in the Chandaria School of Business at USIU-AfricaEnter into any management seminar or leadership forum and invariably the term organisational culture likely pops up. Organisational culture stands as an often amorphous misunderstood buzzword upon which to heap blame or praise for organisational achievements. However, not many management resources actually detail scientific components of organisational culture upon which to build a highly functional organisation. Organisational culture broadly means a plethora of paradigms, assumptions, and norms expected within an entity. Organisational culture proves integral to corporate success since it influences the feelings, thoughts, interactions, and performance in organisations. Social scientists link a healthy organisational culture to such important corporate outcomes as better individual job performance by employees, stronger entity profits, higher employee job satisfaction, commitment to the organisation, less staff isolation and withdrawal, and lower staff turnover. Therefore, Business Talk undertakes a weeks-long series to delve into building and maintaining powerful cultures within Kenya’s companies. Starting off, Turkish researcher Seçil Tastan highlights four critical aspects of organisational culture: training and development, teamwork, rewards and recognition, and communication. Researchers Zahariah Zain, Razanita Ishak, and Erlane Ghani in Malaysia developed a tool for employees to judge the strength of their organisation’s culture. So now, please take a few moments and rate the following aspects of the four organisational culture constructs in your institution. Ascertain whether you 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree), or 5 (strongly agree) that a respective area represents a strong area within your firm