Organizational Culture Versus Organizational Leadership

Organizational Culture versus Organizational leadership

Leadership is the foundation of developing an organization's culture. The organization culture is a reflection of the values, attitudes, and how a company conducts its business backed by the organizations outstanding leader. Culture is the mirror image of how the organization is directed. People see how things are done and will either choose to do business with your organization or not to. This can be for any one of many reasons. A good organizational leader will trust, motivate, and build up their employees, and this gives your business it value; without it you have no foundation to build up the organization to become a profitable success story. Organizational Culture is everything that has been experienced, learned, observed, and adapted by the organization from its very beginning. These encompass many things: the fine tuning of organizational goals, strategies, the values that are based on and are articulated through their image; and how it communicates and interacts with their customers, managers, and employees. Learning from the past helps them to know what is best for the future of their organization as the lessons from trial and error can help to define their expectations for the future.

In defining organizational culture we are communicating what are known as the three layers of organizations culture: observable artifacts (e.g. your uniform, awards; what is determined to be most important and meaningful to the organization, etc.); espoused values (e.g. strategies, goals and philosophies, basic assumptions, values and business ethics, business plans, and the legal regulations, principles, and practices that an organization must abide by); and the third layer enacted values (e.g. these are the values, ethics, and over all attitude of how one is to behave that the employee will display through their actions and conduct). It is "setting the norm" as is observed in the way they perform their job; specifically how they handle the day to day interactions with people, and the quality of their work. The values and codes of conduct are usually learned by the employee over the course of their employment by seeing and experiencing what goes on during the day to day operations. We all possess basic values and morals that we have learned in our culture at home, religiously, or from past employment at other organizations, but I believe much of these are taught by observing other employees when we begin a position with a new organization.

Most jobs I have worked were in pharmaceutical plants in upstate New York, and when I first started at a new plant thing would be different from the way things were done in my previous jobs. I would listen to my supervisor's explanation of what was expected and what safety procedures or uniforms I was to wear. I then would be placed on a machine that had a person who would train me to operate it, clean it, and of all the safety features and procedures I needed to know. I was always thankful to have on the job training so I could learn as much as possible as machine operator. I would watch how people interacted, attended meetings, and did everything I could to learn as much as possible from my fellow employees. I believe it helped me to be an asset to my company and I had confidence in my abilities to learn and do my job to the best of my abilities. When a person works in the pharmaceutical industry or in any healthcare organization, there are so many procedures, rules, and codes of conduct that we have to follow, and we have to protect ourselves and the public at the same time. For example, in the productions pharmaceutical medications if we put too much of the active ingredient into a product