organizational behaviour
- 1. Organizational Culture, Socialization and Mentoring: Establishing a Success/ Failure Rationale <br />Organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguish the organization from other organizations. This system of shared meaning is, on closer examination, a set of key characteristic that the organization values. The researches suggest that there are seven primary characteristic that, in aggregate, capture the essence of an organization’s culture.<br />The Degree to which:<br />Employees are encouraged to be innovative and risk taker.
- 2. Employees are expected to give attention to detail.
- 3. Management focus on result or outcomes rather than on the techniques and processes used to achieve those outcomes.
- 4. Management decision takes into consideration the effect of outcomes on people within the organization.
- 5. Work activities are organized around teams rather than individuals.
- 6. People are aggressive and competitive rather than easygoing.
- 7. Organizational activities emphasis maintaining the stability in contrast to growth.Organization culture is concerned with how employees perceive the characteristic of an organization’s culture, not with whether or not they like them. That is, it’s a descriptive term. This is important because it differentiates this concept from that of job satisfaction. In contrast a job satisfaction seeks to measure affective response to work environment. it’s concerned with how employees feel about the organization’s expectations,rewadrds practices and other things. The organizational culture is descriptive term while job satisfaction is evaluative.<br />Organizational culture has common properties do not mean, however, that there cannot be subcultures within any given culture. Most large organizations have dominant culture and numerous sets of subcultures. When we talk about organization culture it means dominant culture which means expressed core values that are shared by a majority of the organization’s members. Mini cultures within an organization are typically defined by department designation and geographical separation. The purchasing department for example has its own culture that is shared by members of that department. Similarly any unit of organization that is physically separated from the organizations main operations may have different culture. The primary or dominant values that are accepted throughout the organization are termed as strong culture i.e.; a culture in which the core values are intensely held and widely shared. The more members who accept the core values and the greater their commitment to those values is mean culture is strong. One result of strong culture is that employees’ turnover is very low. A strong culture increases behavioral consistency and can act as a substitute for formalization. Because of the strong culture the organizations are less concerned with developing formal rules and regulations to guide employees’ behavior. National culture has a greater impact on employees than does their organization’s culture.<br />Culture performs many functions within the organization. It distinguishes one organization from other organization. It gives a sense of identity. Because of culture the employees work for common interest rather than for the interest of individual. It increases the stability of social system. Organizations hire diverse people because of alternative work strength these people bring to work place. Sometime these diverse behavior and strength are diminishing in strong culture where people wants to fit or adjust.Thats why strong can be liability when it eliminates the unique strength that that people of different background brings to the organization. Its also be liability when it not support the people of different culture.<br />Culture can acts as a liability when share values are not in agreement with one another that increase organization effectiveness. Mostly happens when organizations culture is dynamic. Some time organizations culture is effective in past but it becomes barrier when business is no longer effective. It is also barrier to acquisition and merger because of strong culture of two different organizations it’s become difficult for them to work as one. A number of acquisitions failed due to this reason.<br />An organization culture form because of it founder .founder of an organization have a major impact on organization early culture. They have vision of what organization should be. Culture creation happens in three ways first, founder hires the employees who think and feel the same way they do things. Secondly they socialize these employees to their way of thinking and feeling and finally founder own behavior act as role model for employees.<br />Once culture of an organization is in place, there are practices within the organization that will help in maintaining it. For example the selection process,perfomance evaluation criteria ,training and development activities, and promotion procedure ensure that those people hired which are fit for organization and give reward to those whose support culture and penalize even expel those who challenge it. These things play important role in sustaining organizational culture. The main purpose of selection process is to identify the individuals who have knowledge, skills and abilities to perform the job within the organization successfully. The actions of top management are also very important and have great impact on organization culture.<br />Socialization takes place whenever an employee crosses an organizational boundary. Socialization is an important for employees and organizations for number of reasons. First, neglecting to socialize new recruits has been shown to have negative impacts, with newcomers shows high level of unexpected actions and, in turn, this result as poor attitudes and negative behaviors, including higher levels of turnover. Recruitment and selection are significant costs to organizations. Socialization is important for achieving the desired behavior positive .Second; newcomers are hired to contribute to individual, team and organizational performance criteria. Socialization enable newcomers to get up to speed and to contribute .This is essential so that newcomers know what their performance criteria are, and feel that they are making a valued contribution, as well as ensuring that their colleagues have the same perception. third reason is newcomers need to learn how to function in their organization which requires learning the organization’s values, norms, resource networks and politics Fourth, socialization is important due to its rapid influence and lasting effects. It has four content areas, namely:<br /> (1) Training (2) Understanding (3) Coworker support and<br />(4) Future prospects.<br />Training asks employees to assess the extent to which their organizations provide job skills. Understanding asks how well they comprehend the organization’s operations, etc. Coworker support asks employees to assess the extent to which other workers provide assistance to them. A future prospect asks them to appraise the rewards and opportunities in their organization. <br />Socialization is a process that adapts employees to the organization’s culture. No matter how good a job the organization does in recruiting and selection, new employees are not fully known the organization’s culture. Because they are unfamiliar with the organization‘s culture, new employees are potentially likely to disturb the beliefs and customs that are in place.<br />Socialization can be conceptualized as a process made up of three stages<br />1. Prearrival stage
- 9. 3. MetamorphosisPrearrival period of learning in the socialization process that occurs before a new employee joins the organization. Its cover what work to be done or know about the organization.<br /> In Encounter stage of socialization a new employee sees what the organization is really like and confronts the possibility that expectations and reality may diverge. <br />The stage in the socialization process in which a new employee change and adjusts to the job work group and organization is Metamorphosis stage.<br />Employees learn culture of an organization through number of form like by rituals stories, material symbol, and language. Rituals are repetitive actions that form the key values of organization culture and specify which goals are more important for organization. Stories contain narrative event of organization founder and other event which had affected organization performance may be positively or negatively. And there purpose is that to inform the employees what is bad or good for organization performance. Organization culture can also learn through material symbols. Organization culture can learn through the language. Many organizations use language as a way to identify members of culture or subculture. Even organization over a time develop unique terms to describe equipment, offices, key personnel, suppliers, customer, or products that’s relate to its business.<br />The strength of culture influences an organization’s ethical climate and the ethical behavior of its member. An organization should be ethical if it is high in risk tolerance, low to moderate in aggressiveness, and focuses on mean as well as outcomes. Strong cultures influence the employees. If culture is strong and supports ethical standards it must have very powerful impact on employee’s behavior.<br />Manager must perform following action for the creation of ethical environment.<br />Employees always look to top management behavior as a role model for defining any behavior. When senior manager follows the ethical standards its provides positive message for all employees.
- 10. Organizations must communicate its primary values and ethical rules that employees are expected to follow.
- 11. Set up seminars and workshops for ethical training.
- 12. Always reward for ethical acts and punish unethical acts.
- 13. The organization needs to provide formal mechanisms so that employees discus ethical reports and unethical behavior without any fear.Mentoring is a process of forming and maintaining developmental relationship between mentor and junior person. A mentor is a wise OLD friend who can serve as a trusted counselor, guardian, and teacher. However, it is important to recognize that many junior trainees feel much more comfortable with someone who is not quite so old and may look to someone just a bit more senior to provide advice on how to avoid pitfalls and take maximum advantage of their training along the way. Therefore, a mentor should be a trusted, respected and experienced role model who can serve as a guide and advisor to another usually younger person. Mentoring has the power to change whole organizations. It involves a balance of giving and taking, and it connects people. <br />Common problems during mentoring are:<br />Lack of understanding about how mentoring can benefit the organization.
- 14. Lack of resources to implement mentoring program.
- 15. Belief that mentoring is only for a limited people.There are several factors that contribute to an ideal mentoring environment.<br />The ideal mentoring environment is one in which no one is left out, education and development are valued and respected, People can feel free to grow and learn without fear of censure and everyone is willing to give of their time, knowledge and skills.<br />There are four phases in developing a mentoring progamme:<br />In phase one asses your current situation. You recognize that your organization fully supports mentoring activities or not. Review how mentoring is taken by the organization, both at the executive level and at the grass roots level. Identify any people in the organization who already support mentoring, realize its value, and understand the benefits it can bring to the Organization. Recruit these individuals as mentoring champions. Invite them to share their viewpoint with others, particularly those whom you have identified as not understanding the value of mentoring. Secondly, assess that your current mentoring technology and resources are sufficient to support your mentoring aim.<br />In phase two design the systems and structure needed to implement your plan. Integrate your plans with existing training processes and performance evaluation systems. New technology processes and systems that are needed to Level mentoring across the organization.<br />In phase three you have to develop an approach and designed the systems and structure needed, you must allocate adequate resources to internal and external developers to build the systems and structure. Many companies design programs that are short-lived because they fail to estimate the costs involved in long term mentoring. <br />In phase four implement your mentoring process. How you implement your mentoring process will depend on your unique design, but two key components are critical to your success. Through your own personal efforts and the efforts of your Mentoring champions, classify mentoring as essential to the future of the organization. You can accomplish this through words and deeds. Openly engage in a mentoring relationship so others around you can see the positive impact it has on your work, your partner’s work, and the organization as a whole. Your actions will show that mentoring is valued as a part of the organization’s culture. Acknowledge the efforts of people the people who are the mentees and mentors, mentoring champions, or just people who are making the effort to support mentoring in the organization in any way they can. Again, by recognizing the efforts of individuals trying to make a difference, you show support of mentoring and help make it an integral part of the organizational culture.<br />Implication of organization culture is relate to selection decisions .hiring individuals whose values do not align with those of the organization culture is lead to employees dissatisfaction and lack of motivation so employees misfits lead to higher turnover rate which is not good for organization.<br />Conclusion<br />Focus on building an organizational culture is one way of showing that people are the organization’s most valuable asset.<br />A strong culture is a talent-attractor employee’s look at organization when assessing your organization. The best people want more than a salary and good benefits. They want an environment where they can enjoy and succeed in.<br />A strong culture is talent-retainer. A strong culture creates greater synergy. A strong culture brings people together. When people have the opportunity to communicate and to know each other better, they will find new connections. These connections will lead to new ideas and greater productivity – in other words, you will be creating synergy. Literally, 1 + 1 + right culture = more than 10. A strong culture makes everyone more successful. Creating a better culture is a good thing to do for the human capital in the business.Socalization plays very important role in sustaining the organizational culture and by socialization people come to know about organization norms and values. Mentoring is also very important for sustaining organization culture. These three things organization culture socialization and mentoring are interrelated with each other. Organization culture can easily communicate and flourish through proper socialization and mentoring.<br />References<br /> BIBLIOGRAPHY \l 1033 Bonkeno, M., & Gantt, V. (2000, November). Dialogic Mentoring. ManagementCommunication .<br />Cooper-Thomas, H. D., & Anderson, N. (2006). Organizational socialization. Journal ofManagerial Psychology , 21 (5, 2006), 492-516.<br />Taormina, R. J. (2007). Interrelating leadership behaviors, organizational socialization,and organizational culture. Leadership and Organizational Development , 29(1,2008), 85-102.<br />