Organizational Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Organizational Culture - Essay Example Often the organizational culture is characterized as having three phases; behavior and artifacts, values, and assumptions and beliefs (‘Strategic Leadership and Decision Making’). Organizational culture has great influence on the streamlined decision making process. To illustrate, in a centralized organizational structure, the decision making power is vested in the hand of top level management. On the other hand, in decentralized organizational structures, the decision making power is distributed as down as possible to the first phase of chain of command. The organizational culture provides the members of a firm with meaning and regulations for behaving within the organization. In the same way, a firm’s history together with unwritten rules also constitutes a significant part of its culture. On the other hand, some organizational cultures are so strong that they dictate the character of the whole firm. The organizational culture has the power to influence the deci sion making as it articulates informally through direct and indirect statements what the management wishes. The culture, sometimes, consists of explicit statements of values, beliefs, and customs got from top-level managements. Strategic Transition Strategy can be defined as the overarching goals and objectives of a business. The strategy decisions of a company affect its line of business and its internal operations. It is much difficult to predict exactly what happens when the organization alters its strategy. However, organizations come across some positive and negative effects when undertaking a strategic change. Importance Organizational strategy controls all managerial decisions from the front line to the board room. Strategic policies play the important role of guidelines to the owners and top-level management in achieving their grand expectations in a more practical way. Changing the strategy of an organization can alter the manner and mode which the organization operates in, affecting everything from organizational structure to the daily practices of employees. Process The process of a corporate strategic transition by an organization can be divided into four distinct steps such as planning, implementing, monitoring, and review. At the planning process, the executives set a strategic vision with concrete and time-bound objectives and aims. Suitable research and testing must be carried out at this stage to make sure the viability of the change. At the implementations stage, the changes must be put into action in accordance with the plan. The monitoring stage includes a continual process of supervising and examining that the plans are working. Finally, the review phase analyzes the progress of the working of the plan and decides whether the changes must be sustained or changed yet again. Positive Effects Changing the strategy of an organization can result in several positive effects. New strategic guidelines help an organization to easily acclimatize to the changing environments of the marketplace. New business strategies assist a company to execute its business more effectively and cost efficiently. They help a company to invest into a new, more profitable trade or market segment. Besides, with the help of changes in the strategy, a stagnant company can retrieve its earlier growth rates. Negative Effects However, all the effects are not positive and there are negative effects too. Organizations face the major issue of resistance from the internal employees against implementing effective strategic changes. There are certain people who strongly oppose any kind of alterations to the status quo or to their daily practices. In the same way, there are also chances for an organization t