jueves, 28 de enero de 2010

CULTURE VS. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

First, I want to define each concept.

Culture has been identified like an important issue since merchantilism and the economy expansion during the 20th century, because people needed to understand cultural differences in order to interact in the work place with the immigrants. Although, since colonization, people had to deal with it.
It can be defined as the total complex of knowledge, beliefs, values, arts, moral, laws and customs of an specific country or region.

The Organizational Culture term comes from the 80s, when two business experts Tom Peters and Robert Waterman adapted this social and antropological concept to the organizations.
The definition could be the way members of a company interact each other with a unified set of values, modes of thinking, managemental style, and also with the same paradigms, problem solutions and decision making process.

Now, it easy to find the difference between both concepts. Culture is a general concept of how people behaves according to some established norms and customs created by the own society, but organizational culture is a concept much more specific that determines the way of a company works homogeneously in terms of ideology, intensity, adaptability, behavior and labor climate among all its members.