Saturday, April 17, 2010

Culture

I am always followed by culture. In fact culture is the part of my education. I did B. Sc. in microbiology. Bacteria are grown on different media and grown bacteria on the media are known as bacterial culture. Specific bacteria can’t grow on specific media. They need specilised media.

After taking admission for management, I studied organizational behaviour. Again culture came to bother me. The organizational culture, how the culture is developed etc etc.

Now for last 12 years, I am part of the culture, i.e organizational culture. As an employee, I am part of the culture and as a HR Professional; I am made responsible for creating, developing or changing culture.

Family culture, social culture, institutional culture and organizational culture have the major influence on our personalities. Mainly creating, establishing or influencing the culture is depend upon the parents, adults in family and society, Seniors in organizations. As a kid we are not responsible for the culture, however by learning, educating, we can be aware about the culture.

The customs, code of conduct and way of interaction, behaviour form the culture.

I along with my wife and son was seating in principal office during the admission procedure for my son. There was another couple seating there. The mother asked the principal, “What is the appropriate age for starting education? We want to admit our son in this school.”

If you are talking about admission, you are on time, but if you are talking about education, you are late. Education starts from the birth of child. It is not only the responsibility of school and teachers. You, parents are first teacher of child.” She replied.

The principal put the valid point which we always ignore. We actually force child to tuitions, classes thinking that our children will get good education and they will be successful citizens. What about culture and value education. In schools, teachers will teach value education, but in real sense family members, parents and adults are role models for their children. We have learnt everything but forgot our values.

In organizations it is the responsibility of seniors. Management recognizes the right culture and culture change, but they don‎’t know sometimes what they really want. They almost forget that they are the responsible for the culture change. Sometimes consultants are hired for some projects like BPR, Process mapping or restructuring. During the implementing phase management feels that with traditional thinking the projects will not be successful. They brand culture programmes. The way management treats its employees, the way of behaviour, the management style, the response employees give constitute culture.

Sometime new employee in traditional culture is not comfortable in transparent or open organization or vice versa because of habit. Almost every organization drives the culture change initiatives. These drives can be successful only when the top management is committed to and the said can be cascaded down the line in line managers.

Values, norms, climate and organization support are the basic elements of culture. This all give the choice of behavior. It is the management or top people who decide all above. In a wider sense, low level employee also can be role model in certain behaviour. However nobody cares his behaviour. Hence he comes in office, wears a mask and tries to adjust in the organizational culture. Most of the Indian auto-component companies have aggressive work culture where individual respect is always at stake. Employees either adapt to that or leave the organization.

Organizations can only grow when the culture exhibits values of organization and practiced by employees. It is same like bacteria which grow on specific cultures.

6 comments:

Ramesh Dhotre said...

Excellent sir. You put the thought in differrent perspectives.

Vikas W. said...

Since long time reading your articles....really nice thought processing.

YogeshHukame said...

The process of formation of the culture needs to be analysed.I will wait for your article on how the different cultures are formed and how we define a good culture and bad culture so that we can move forward ahead with the good culture and leave aside a bad culture.

YogeshHukame said...

The process of formation of the culture needs to be analysed.I will wait for your article on how the different cultures are formed and how we define a good culture and bad culture so that we can move forward ahead with the good culture and leave aside a bad culture.

sanjayrakecha said...

Gud one sir

Unknown said...

Nice thought.

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