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Organisations as Culture

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Organizational culture is one of those high-level things that affects individuals within the system in many ways, but over which they have little personal control. As we noted in the introduction, different levels within a company may have different cultures, as may different units at the same level. And to make things more complicated, different people may experience, describe, and interpret the same cultural phenomena in different ways. All that said, there's no doubt that there IS such a thing as organizational culture, and it shapes and interacts with machine phenomena, organic phenomena, and brain phenomena in many ways.

A good place to begin to learn about the cultural approach to organizations is here:

Richman, T. (1999) The Culture Wars. Inc. Magazine. Retrieved May 16, 2010, from http://www.inc.com/magazine/19990515/4702.html

You can learn more about the Deal and Kennedy culture model at:

Changing Minds.Org (N.D.) Deal and Kennedy's Cultural Model. Retrieved May 16, 2010, from http://changingminds.org/explanations/culture/deal_kennedy_culture.htm

Another culture model that is of considerable interest due to its connection to sociotechnical systems thinking is described here:

Changing Minds.Org (N.D.) The Competing Values Framework. http://changingminds.org/explanations/culture/competing_values.htm

But the corporate culture model that some online universities recently selected for its owen internal survey of administrators, staff, and faculty is that of Denison:

Denison Consulting Inc. (ND) The Denison Model. Retrieved February 20, 2009, from http://www.denisonconsulting.com/dc/Research/DenisonModel/tabid/29/Default.aspx
Case Assignment

Read these articles on organizational culture, supplemented if you wish with material from the optional readings and perhaps the supplementary background as well, and even other outside reading you might find by yourself to be useful. Then write a paper describing your assessment of why some online universities decided that the Denison culture model would be more useful in understanding TUIU as a corporate culture than any of the other three you have read about.

Case Assignment Expectations

It's important to note that there is no one uniquely correct answer to this question; you aren't being asked to try to reproduce some online universities own management decisions, but rather to comment on the value of the Denison model given what you know about some online universities from having participated in it for however long you have.

You are expected to deal with the issues in an integrated fashion, rather than treating them as a series of individual questions to be answered one by one and left at that. To help guide your thinking, however, you will need to consider issues such as:

What things about organizations are considered to be parts of organizational culture, and what things are excluded from that category, in terms of the different models

Ways in which cultures change, and why (drawing on what you have observed about some online universities for examples if possible)

The degree to which culture can be deliberately reshaped in certain directions -- by whom, when, under what conditions, and with what effects

Why one model might be more effective in helping some online universities to underatand its own functioning than another, at this point in time

What, if anything, that thinking about an "organization as a culture" adds to what we have learned by thinking about an "organization as a machine", an "organization as an organism", and an "organization as a brain".

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The solution provides a thorough explanation to the question. A total of 1267 words with 4 references has also been included. Detailed explanation of how the Denison model helps the organisation as compared to other models has been provided.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: ** Please use this for reference only and do not submit this as your own work. The document attached is for REFERENCE PURPOSES only.***

Organizations as CULTURES
Introduction: Organizations have a number of different roles and images that they take on each day; and this is clear from the Morgan's eight metaphors. The paper aims at discussing the role of organizations as Cultures. The eight metaphors that organisations take on include Machines, Organisms, Cultures, Political Systems, Brains, Psychic Prisons, Instrument of Dominations and Flux & transformation (Buchanan and Huczynski).
Denison Culture Model: The Denison Culture model was developed with an aim to study the link between the culture of the organisation and the bottom line performance of the measures. These include areas like return on investments, sales growth, quality, and employee satisfaction and also the innovations. The following sections will detail why organisations prefer to use this when compared to the other models.
Organisational Culture: Gareth Morgan has described organizational culture as: 'The set of the set of beliefs, values, and norms, together with symbols like dramatized events and personalities that represents the unique character of an organization, and provides the context for action in it and by it' (Morgan). There have also been a number of other opinions and definitions that have been provided for the concept of organizational culture. According to Schein, organizational culture is, 'A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems that has worked well enough to be considered valid and is passed on to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems' (Schein).The culture of an organization in a number of ways conveys the identity of the members of the organization and also allows for the commitment to be highlighted larger than self interest. The organizational culture is like fixing glue which keeps the organization together and also helps in providing set standards for the employees and all members of the ...

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