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Organisational Culture and Strategic Management Relationship

Paper Type: Free Essay Subject: Commerce
Wordcount: 3100 words Published: 01 Jan 2015

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Introduction

This essay tackles the relationship between organisational culture and strategic management. Enterprises must set a goal, and then achieve it. Goals have to be supported by strategic, implementation of the strategy requires the support of the faith. Therefore, there is very close relation between organisational culture and strategy. Mainly in the following aspects.

Three main aspects

First, excellent corporate culture is an important condition for the formulation of corporate strategy and is able to highlight the characteristics of the enterprises, the formation of the common values of the corporate members, and the corporate culture has a distinct personality, help companies develop different the strategy of defeating the enemy.

Second, the corporate culture is an important means of implementation of the corporate strategy. After corporate strategy development, it requires all members of the active and effective implementation, is the corporate culture oriented, constraint, cohesion, motivation and radiation effect, stimulate the enthusiasm of employees, unified corporate members will jointly strive to achieve the enterprise’s goals.

Thirdly: corporate culture and corporate strategy must adapt to each other, mutual coordination and strategy development, corporate culture should change with the new formulation of strategy, however, to change corporate culture is very difficult once the organisational culture is formed. 

Restrictive in Nature

Therefore, from the point of view of the implementation of the strategy, the corporate culture to the implementation of the corporate strategy, will restrict, that the corporate culture has greater rigidity and a certain continuity, enhanced gradually in the process of enterprise development. The implementation of the corporate strategy. 

Enterprises in major changes must be considered with the basic nature and status of the relationship, because the basic nature and status of the enterprise is to determine the basis of the corporate culture, at the same time to play an existing corporate personnel role in ensuring the implementation of change in the original culture conditions. senior corporate managers to focus on to be considered compatible with the original enterprise culture change, do not break the code of conduct, then the companies have formed.

In summary

The analysis of the enterprises in strategic management, corporate culture should be given enough attention only corporate culture and strategic role to play in order to enable enterprises to develop better development. (Jing, L. 2007)

Definition of strategic management

Strategic management is the management of an organisation’s overall purpose, to ensure that the needs and enablers of the present are balanced with those of the future

From the view of the future development of enterprises, strategic as a plan, and from the view of the course of development in the past, the strategy as a Pattern. If you look at the industrial level, the strategic performance as a Position, look at the enterprise level. Strategy as a Perspective. (Peter F¼ŽDrucker)

i.e: Through analysis, forecasting, planning, control, and other means to achieve the full advantage of the enterprise, financial, and material resources, in order to achieve optimal management, improve economic efficiency purposes. (Chris .J2008)

Strategic management’s importance for a company

Strategic management grows and develops into a changing environment. Thus, management job use by the future trend as their basic of making decision, so it makes the manager of enterprise to focus on research of operating environment, properly determine the development direction of a company and to select suitable operation area or marketing area.

Therefore able to catch the chance for outside environment, and enhance the adaptability of the business activities of the external environment, and thus to achieve the best combination of the two.

i.e: Wal-Mart’s annual sales exceeded $40 billion, one of the world’s large-scale retail enterprises. Their successful is most depend on their business strategic:

“One-stop” shopping

  1. Free Parking: Shenzhen Sam’s business area is more than 12,000 square meters, nearly 400 free parking spaces, while another business area of over 17.8 thousand square meters Wal-Mart shopping plaza also has about 150 parking spaces.
  2. The store employs professionals to give customers free advice about computers, cameras, video recorders and their associated supplies, to help reduce the risks of blindly buying.

Charity

Wal-Mart in order to provide more benefits to customers, while trying to reduce the cost of advertising, for promotional creative a lot of thought, and strive to get the best effect with minimum capital investment.

Cover

Wal-Mart brand management strategy, select a variety of retail forms for the different grades of the target consumers. It is because of Wal-Mart’s all-round attack, seizing the high-and low-end market, so Wal-Mart replaced Sears which has swept throughout the United States, to become the first in the retail brand.

Organisational Culture and Strategic Management Relationship

Its own brand

Wal-Mart has been active in the Chinese market development. As such, they began promotion of Wal-Mart’s “own brand”, particularly via:

  • launched a “high quality and price cheaper” own brand merchandise;
  • covering food;
  • household goods;
  • clothing, footwear and other flagship categories. (Soderquist, D. 2005)

Definition of organisational culture

The organisational culture is the sum of the enterprises in the construction and development of material civilisation and spiritual civilisation. Including the organisation and management of both hardware and software. Explicit cultural and implicit cultural organisational culture is formed by the organisation in the long-term survival and development of the organisation. The sum of the target value is the organisation most members follow the:

  • highest standards;
  • basic beliefs and;
  • behavior norms in the organisation reflects

Specifically: organisational culture is the general term for organisations of all members of the organisation. These include:

  • commonly accepted values;
  • codes of conduct;
  • team spirit;
  • way of thinking;
  • work style;
  • psychological expectations and;
  • feelings of belonging and sense of community.

Understanding and Expressions of Corporate Culture

(1) Ultimately, one gradually forms the corporate culture in the working groups of the specification.

(2) The corporate culture, in essence, is the values you espouse as a business major.

(3) Corporate culture is the purpose of the guide enterprises to develop the policy of employees and customers.

(4) The corporate culture is sought in the enterprise competition for survival “principle”. Accordingly, the new employees to the enterprise need to master the “inner rules.

(5) The corporate culture is a way to convey the feeling or atmosphere within the object layout. Moreover, corporate members dealing with customers or other external members.

(6) Corporate culture is the traditional atmosphere of a company culture. In short, it means that the company values, such as aggressive, defensive or flexible – these values constitute of company employees vitality, opinions and behavior norms. Managers personally, these norms and instill in employees from generation to generation.

(7) Corporate culture ultimately includes some kind of cultural stereotypes and historical tradition. Thus, a common value criteria, ethics and life information, unified the various internal forces in a common guiding ideology. In short, under the operating philosophy, they’re brought together to a common direction.

Mixing of Culture and Economic Significance

In essence, this refers to the formation of:

  • values in the corporate world;
  • code of conduct in the crowd and;
  • community cultural influences.

It does not refer to the cultivation of knowledge, but rather refers to the attitude of the people of knowledge. Not profit, but profit mental; less interpersonal relationships, but interpersonal life skills embodied in human philosophy. The corporate culture is a penetration in the activities of all the things it virtues.

The corporate culture is the basic information of the business organisation. Accordingly, there are basic values and the basic view of the internal and external environment, is. These ultimately serve as a code of conduct. All must abide by the enterprise, beliefs and value system.

Corporate culture, production and operation and management activities with the spirit of the enterprise features to create wealth and physical form in certain social and historical conditions. As a result, it includes cultural attitudes, values, entrepreneurship, ethics, code of conduct, history, tradition, enterprise system, cultural environment, enterprise products, and more. Values, in short, are the core of the corporate culture.

Examples 

  1. American scholars John Kotter and James Heskett, offer their own views on the matter. Corporate culture refers to the various departments in an enterprise, or at least those business executives who have corporate values and operating practices. … Referring to the various departments of the enterprise segment, or located in different geographical environments, departments have some kind of common cultural phenomenon. (John P. Kotter,James L.1992.)
  2. Tres Deere and Alan Kennedy believe in corporate culture values, heroes, customs, ceremonies, cultural networks, enterprise environment.
  3. William Ouchi, the corporate culture is “aggressive, defensive, flexible – that determines the values of the activities, views and behavior patterns.”

The role of organisational culture

The corporate culture is a new theory of modern enterprise management. Enterprises really want to step into the market as well. Thus, they embark on a rapid development, better efficiency, and continuously improve the overall quality. Moreover, they must popularise and strengthen the building of enterprise culture.

1. Integration role

Traditional scientific method or scientific management functions are bound to live the behavior of employees, but can not win the hearts of the staff. Strong organisational culture, but it can stimulate the enthusiasm of the staff, the employees are committed to working power. A cohesive organisational culture, organisational values deeply rooted among the employees to the organisation as their own home, and are willing to contribute their strength in order to organise a common goal, so that staff and organisational integration.

Organisational culture fundamentally changes the old valuable concept of employees, establishing new values, to meet the needs of the organisation normal practice activities. 

2. Improve performance

Management expert Peter Drucker (Peter F. Drucker) says: 

“The nature of the enterprise, that decided the most important principle of the nature of the business, economic performance.”

If the organisational culture does not impact firm performance, then it highlights not see its importance, we know indeed play a positive role in tissue culture in the organisation of internal integration, but whether it is possible to improve the economic efficiency of enterprises? The answer is yes.

3. Improve the organisational role

Cultural heritage organisations form thanks to a continuous process of development through numerous radiation, feedback, and strengthen. We will constantly update as practice development and optimisation, and promote organisational culture from one height to another highly forward. 

In other words, the organisational culture continues to deepen and perfect once formed a virtuous circle, will continue to promote the organisation’s own rise development, in turn, the organisation will promote progress and improve the organisational culture of the rich, perfect and sublimation. Successful organisations and enterprises facts indicate that the prosperity of the organisation is always inseparable from the self-improvement of the organisational culture.

4. Shaping products

In summary, organisational culture as a human creation. Moreover, the best form of expression is the company’s products. When the company’s products are infiltrating the tissue culture, the vitality of its products will not be compared to any other enterprise. Organisational culture has a very important role in shaping the enterprise product, product design, production and sales enterprises in accordance with the organisational culture, only in line with the corporate culture products to have a firm foothold in the market. 

Enterprise products, in turn, selling, consumers will further understand the organisational culture, which is a mutual promotion and development of the relationship.

i.e.: After the study, the Côte and Hess Côte (1992) that:

  1. Organisational culture has a major role on the long-term results of operations;
  2. The organisational culture of the next 10 years is likely to be the key factors that determine the success of enterprise;
  3. A negative role of organisational culture on a good corporate long-term operating results are not uncommon. Wherein, organisational culture is easy to propagate extension, even if that brings together a lot of common sense, knowledge of a high degree of talent;
  4. Although the organisational culture is not easy to change, it can translate into organisational culture that is conducive to the growth of the business performance.

Why is important

Organisational culture is important for an enterprise as the function of organisational culture.

Specifically, following six main functions:

1. Orientation

Oriented functions, corporate culture can play a guiding role on the value orientation of the organisation as a whole, and each member of the organisation behaves in line with the goals established by the organisation. Organisational culture is just a soft bound by the shared values of the organisation to the penetration of personal values, enabling organisations to automatically generate a set of self-regulatory mechanisms to guide the behavior and activities of the organisation in an adaptive culture.

2. Constraints

In essence, constraint functions mean the role of the enterprise organisational culture constraints and specifications of each employee’s ideological, psychological and behaviour. Constraints of organisational culture are not system-hard constraints, but a soft constraint. As such, this soft constraint is equal to diffuse organisation organisational culture, groups, code of conduct and ethics.

3. Cohesion

The cohesion function, when one set of values is co-sanctioned by the organisation’s staff, it will become a kind of adhesive to unite its members from all aspects, resulting in a tremendous solidarity and cohesion. The main reason for the success is organisation, cohesion employees have a common goal and vision together, encouraging enterprises to continue to move forward and develop.

4. Excitation

Excitation function, the corporate culture has members from the heart to produce a high emotional and strenuously enterprising spirit of the effects, it can maximise their staff’s enthusiasm and pioneering spirit. 

The emphasis on people-centered corporate culture management methods. Its incentive is not an external impetus, but an inner guidance, it is not a passive way to meet the psychological needs of the people to realise their own values, but through the shaping of the organisational culture, so that each employee from the heart is dedicated to organisation combat.

5. Radiation function

Whn you you form it, corporate culture will play a role within the organisation. Additionally, it will impact on the organisation’s staff and the community through a variety of channels. Organisations the cultural radiation to the social channels, but mainly can be divided into two categories Various forms of publicity and personal contacts. 

On the one hand, the spread of the culture of organisations to establish the organisation’s image in the public helps; On the other hand, the corporate culture has a great influence on the development of social culture.

6. Branding

Enterprise brand image in the minds of the public, is a hardware based products and services “and a corporate culture based software consisting of complex. Excellent corporate culture, enhancing the brand image will play a huge role. Excellent unique corporate culture can produce a huge brand.

Examples

  1. At “Microsoft”, “Ford”, “GE”, “Coca-Cola”, their unique corporate culture in its brand building process has played a significant role. The brand value is the accumulation of time, but also the accumulation of corporate culture.
  2. Wal-Mart places a great emphasis on brand protection. As a company, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in July 2011 submitted applications to the World Intellectual Property Forum. Accordingly, they said the disputed domain OurWalmart dot com with its logo “Walmart,” that infringe on their rights and interests, the request for arbitration back to the domain name. 

It is understood that the OurWalmart dot com domain name is accessible, the site is a Wal-Mart employee reaction to issues related to platform, salary, working hours and other issues can be seen from this platform, the website seeks the voices of an employee to provide services solutions, is a The non-profit organisation.

Conclusion

The organisational culture is the pillar to carry out the strategy, it means the guide line, business idea, and the work style that includes the values of people, personal culture, custom, management policy and the company image of an enterprise. People are social animals, the same as wolves. Wolves will never hunt alone, they take action by a group as a company, the culture makes them act together, therefore they are able to carry out their strategy to hunt, and due to this, the hunting gets easier.

The so-called organisational culture, common values held by the people as a corporate body, action, and ways of thinking. The business philosophy is the core of the corporate culture. It shows the value of the enterprise, but also provides the basis of the strategic objectives, and also includes a mode of operation, the basic norms of behavior. In other words, the business philosophy of the fundamental values of the work of the business people. Such values are the foundation of the corporate culture, created by companies, the guiding ideology of the major operators in the decision. Therefore, it must lay a deep imprint on the formulation of corporate strategy.

The strategy is deciding the development of the most fundamental long-term goals and short-term purposes of planning, but also includes the necessary means to achieve these goals and objectives are to be taken, and how the allocation of resources of all kinds to make decisions. Corporate culture supports the corporate strategy, enterprise strategy can be implemented smoothly, largely depends on the content of the strategic behavior and corporate members, the way of thinking fit. No matter how wonderful the corporate strategy, if you do not adapt to the cultural basis, it will not have a very good performance.

A Final Thought

“I am engaged in the operation, over six years of experience and deep feelings about the importance of the business philosophy of an enterprise exists for what it? What is the purpose of operating? Operating in what ways? These issues must to have a really basic concepts. 

“The foundation of the business is the right philosophy. Only do solid foundation, people, technology and capital be possible to really play the role of a variety of resources make it easier to make an impact. With a clear business philosophy, my own, compared with the former, there is a firm belief that … For a long time, my business is strong. Employees listened to my lectures are very touched they deeply impressed by their mission and their responsibilities, everyone for the enterprise. masters of our enterprises have grown up at an alarming rate.” (Matsushita, K. 2002)

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