CHAPTER ONE

 Research Background

INTRODUCTION

It is generally known that culture is essential in determining how people behave, their worldview, their attitude towards work and achievement. As culture is commonly defined to be the way a group of people live and interact, organisational culture is how people in an organisation co-exist and go about their business. According to Deal and Kennedy (2000), organisational culture is simply “the way things are done around here”. Rashid et al. (2003) and Mannion et al. (2005) found that the culture impacts an organisation and many studies have shown that culture significantly affects an organisation’s output. Culture influences an organisation’s approach to work and many aspects of work including management decisions as to how to organise work, what work systems are needed, what caliber of people are needed to work with, how promotions are done, who gets rewarded and for what, among other things. These decisions and their outcomes ultimately affect organisational performance. Organisational culture serves as a “cognitive map” by which group members find the systems, rules, and values to internalize and live by (Jones, 1983). As the culture guides what and how, it also impacts on the results. Kotter and Heskett, (1992) note that culture of any organisation is its management philosophy and the way in which organisations are managed to improve overall performance and effectiveness.

Organisational culture thus impacts and informs an organisation’s management style and practices as well as employees’ attitude towards work and performance. Gallagher and Brown (2007) assert that culture is the dominant predictor of exceptional organisational performance. According to Moorman (1995), earlier research shows that organisational culture impact organisational performance in terms of; what a firm considers its outcomes

to be and the means by which these outcomes are attained including how the organisation structures itself and processes and procedures it adopts. Performance is an important subject for every organisation be it for profit or not for profit and managers are continuously seeking ways to improve upon performance. Researchers, Managers and Human Resource Department have long been interested in the factors that influence organisational performance. Indeed, Organisational performance is of key interest to researchers as a dependent variable in management (organisational) studies (Richard et al, 2009).