Organizational Culture and Implementing Change

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Organizational culture plays a major role in how successful a company performs against its goals. Similar to how members of society act based upon their unique cultures, employees inside of an organization use numerous factors to form their own culture and this reflects how they react to difficult situations, respond to change, and accept new challenges. Often, this culture will be heavily influenced by the organizations leadership and their value systems which make managing workforce culture even more interesting (Jones, 2010).

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the environmental factors that influence an organizations culture and determine how an organizations culture impacts the overall performance of its workforce. Specifically, we will examine how organizational culture impacts the ability of leaders to implement new challenges and bring about changes to the company's mission when business needs demand it.

When examining an organization's behavior, culture will always arrive at the surface as one of the key drivers that influence decision making, employee attitudes and behaviors, performance factors, and success. In order to better understand this phenomenon that is culture, the internal and external factors that influence organizational culture have to be examined under closer analysis to determine if an organizations culture is healthy or detrimental to the businesses longevity (Alford, 2010).

Three of the predominant internal factors that will impact an organizations culture are, leadership, organizational structure, and the corporate philosophy. The three key external factors that will be reviewed are the environment, type of industry, and location.

Although each of these internal and external factors are independent forces, they will each work in conjunction with the other to form the framework and basis for the organizations culture that will be predominant inside of the organizational network. This research will focus on these factors independently and demonstrate how each specific factor impacts the culture in its own unique way. Additionally, this research will give the reader a conceptual framework of how these internal and external factors can be molded together to help forge the basis of organizational cultures (Alford, 2010).

This research begins with the internal factor of leadership. Of all the factors examined, leadership by far is the one key factor that has to be underscored in all organizations as the primary driver for the overall performance of the company. Culture may exist because of a leader's style or philosophy, or, new leaders may inherit poor cultures and be charged with correcting that culture with a new vision. This, however, is not an easy task (Belk, 2012).

The choice in leadership and the direction it plots for a company will play a major role in the culture that is developed. This is why organizations must ensure that their choice of leaders matches their vision for their company's future. When leadership fails to focus on culture as a part of the overall strategic plan, it can become very difficult to reverse the downward spiral that can began to occur overtime as the culture deteriorates away from an accepting culture to a rejecting one (Belk, 2012). This is when organizations truly feel the full impact that leadership choice has on culture.

In examining the impact that leadership has on organizational culture, research demonstrates that this internal factor alone can be one of the leading forces that drive how an organization and its employees act or react to important business decisions (Belk, 2012). According to Wilson's research of more than 50 global organizations, it is the organizations leadership that ultimately "establishes the acceptable and unacceptable behaviors that all employees will follow" (Wilson, 2011).

The point of Wilson's observation and research focuses on the distinct characteristics associated with different leadership styles and the influences that leaders own sets of values will have on the way they establish policy and procedures for their organizations to follow (Wilson, 2011).

Specifically, Wilson's research shows a distinct correlation exists between leaders unique life experiences, belief systems, values, and core principles and the organizations culture. It is for this reason that companies often find themselves having to replace their leadership at the top in order to make changes to their culture in the organization as opposed to ridding themselves of their workforce at the lower levels (Wilson, 2011).
From following this research it can be extrapolated out that organizational leadership and culture are directly aligned. When ...