Organizational Culture

Commonly, organizational culture is defined as a complex set of values, beliefs, assumptions and symbols that define the way in which a firm drives its business (Peters and Waterman, 1982) and acts as a cohesion factor on behalf of the successful performance of an organization at its daily operation. Nevertheless, for an individual to acquire a determined behavior, based on the corporate or organizational culture, when becoming part of that organization, he or she requires to experience an adaptation process that leads him or her to interiorise the customs and attitudes which will finally give that individual the character of a full member of this organization. But when does it come to be an adaptation mechanism to the logic of the company, for example, and when would organizational cultura constitute itself as a manipulation mechanism for having under control its human capital?

Well, at first sight one could say organizational culture is merely a set of formal or informal behavioral rules which ought to be followed by employees, as it happens in a society or a country, where behavior is certainly limited by legal norms and separation from them or extralimitation of freedom, gets a punishment related to degree of the extralimitation. Then, under this inductive reasoning, an organization is just a reflection of any constitutional political regime, which has determined behaviors as required. It is normal, isn't it?

However, what is manipulation? If it could be understood as I do it, manipulation would be the "art" of accomodating circumstances on a certain way so that the outcome resulting from the interaction of those circumstances is my desired outcome! As I'm pretty comfortable with this definition due to the fact that it summarizes what dictionaries say in nice words, I will then use it to say that indeed organizational culture is nothing more than a manipulation mechanism designed to make its constituents act on the way the organization needs them to act, in order to fulfill the posed objectives.

Uniforms, anthems, symbols, ways of addressing to others, of writing and even of thinking towards situations are just the kind of elements used and neccessary to manipulate minds of people, very commonly used by religions, political regimes and corporations, all of them: organizations. These elements in conjuction with others try to give cohesion, uniformity and standardization inside an organization, so that its purpose is accomplished by the traced means. But anyway, isn't it what a company should somehow do?

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'Easy boy! Easy Prince!!'

Kohl, Joe.

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