An organization can shape its cultures and ethics in various ways. Organizational culture is a condition whereby a company mainly focuses on its own life through a shared meaning that distinguishes it from the rest. Several companies around the globe apply organizational culture, which leads to their growth. For example, Amazon is listed among the most innovative companies.
The innovation is brought about by adjusting to its organizational culture. The two levels of organizational culture are the surface and the underneath surface. The surface levels involve observable behaviors such as dressings, slogans, ceremonies, and physical settings. The underneath level encompasses the attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, and values. These levels are crucial as they build the relationship among members of an entity and help them adapt to the external environment.
Organizational culture contains four types, including mission, bureaucracy, clan, and adaptability. The mission culture emphasizes the purpose of a business and the achievement of goals to enable it to achieve its purpose. Adaptability culture focuses on the external environment through modification and flexibility in meeting customer needs. It brings a change in an organization and rewards creativity and innovation. The clan culture focuses on meeting the needs of employees to boost their productivity. Finally, bureaucratic culture focuses on creating a stable internal environment and the best business approaches. The leaders and employees ensure high levels of collaboration, conformity, and consistency to achieve success.
Therefore, it is crucial to shape and sustain an organizational culture. Leaders should focus on implementing strategic ideas and values to bring success to a company. When these organizational values and ideas grow, they become institutionalized and organizational culture emerges. Organizations that possess a strong culture based on their values have staffs who portray good behaviors, thereby reducing turnover rates; organizational culture also ensures high performance. Therefore, leaders should develop strategies that enhance performance, like employee motivation, unify people in sharing common goals, and shape behavior to align every employee in goal achievement.
Also, organizational ethics revolve around the company’s culture and individual character. It helps in distinguishing the right and wrong approaches toward organizational tasks. Unethical behaviors affect the reputation and display a company’s bad image. Ethics are also vital in decision-making strategies. They help leaders execute justified decisions that do not deny employees’ rights to promote the greatest good for the most significant number of people. Since the business depends on how leaders think and act, executives should use the right criterion for executing decisions to enhance employee performance and the overall organization.