Identifying Organizational Culture
How to identify an organizational culture. The Ronald McDonald Center clearly illustrates the importance of community to McDonald’s. The emphasis on “quality, service, cleanliness and value” informs employees of what the company does well and what all workers should focus on. Other approaches to assessing culture result in pictures different from this one. A manager might find it useful to catalog the myths and stories that circulate in his own organization and ask whether they share some common meaning purposeful to the organization. This method would be one way to get an idea about the culture of one’s own organization. The corporate culture specialist Schein states that there are no reliably quick ways to identify the cultural assumptions of people in organizations. He recommends observing, talking to people, collecting archival data, listening to stories, and so on, until a pattern finally emerges.
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Éric Raymond
