Toxic Organizational Culture
The
story about ABC Apparels who is in the threshold of bankruptcy after 50 years
of business due to the toxic organizational culture they developed over the years….
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Figure 1: Toxic Work Culture
Source: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/fixing-a-toxic-work-culture-guarding-against-dark-triad
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ABC apparels one of the key player in Sri Lankan apparel exporters association who is today by what means in a very difficult situation mainly because of their organizational culture. This is their story from the “cultures” point of view.
Being a medium to large scale
apparel manufacture in Sri Lanka for over last 5 decades, ABC apparels is in its
third generation’s hands. Single family owned business was flourishing few
decades back with strong financial hold and continuously growth in sales and
revenues. So what went wrong? Why they are now closing down their plants and in
verge of bankruptcy? The main reason from many peoples point of view is the “bad
culture” they developed over the years. As mentioned about three generations,
probably the first was very good at people, second bit rude though as the third
made it common to hire & fire people and abusing culture which made them
utterly notorious in the market. What is this organization culture? How can it
be bad?
As per Schein (1992), Organizational
culture is the set of shared values, beliefs, and norms that influence the way
employees think, feel, and behave in the workplace. Further according to Marcoulides
& Heck, (1993) and Schein, (1992) Organizational culture facilitates the
acceptable solution to know the problems, which members learn, feel and set the
principles, expectations, behavior, patterns, and norms that promote high level
of achievements.
At ABC, problems are not taken as opportunities
to learn, rather trying to cover up the problems often call them as excuses and
avoided. This is opposite to Kotter’s, (2012), organizational culture has the
potential to enhance organizational performance, employee job satisfaction, and
the sense of certainty about problem solving.
ABC top level leaderships not demonstrating
any transformational leadership qualities rather practicing some autocratic leaderships
making the situation further worst. Transformational leadership is related to
organizational culture, mainly by the process of expressing a vision, and
secondly by setting expectations of high performance and extending support to
individual workers (Sarros, Cooper, and Santora, 2008).
Suggestion: Even still ABC
apparel can change their culture to a bad toxic one to a good, positive and harmonies
one by adding people friendly values, believes & norms as Bulach,
Lunenburg, & Potter, (2012) suggested, certain types of organizational
cultures may be related directly to greater effectiveness and productivity than
others.
References:
Ø Schien, E.H. (1992). Organizational Culture and
Leadership, 2nd Edition, San Francisco; Jossey-Bass.
Ø Marcoulides, G. and Heck, R.H. (1993). Organizational
Culture and Performance: Proposing and Testing a Model, Organizational Science,
4(2) : 209-223.
Ø Biswas, S. (2009) ‘Organization
culture and transformational leadership
as predictors of
employee performance’ The Indian Journal of industrial Relations,Vol.
44, No. 4, pp. 611-627.
Ø Sheridan,
J.E. (1992)‘The relationship between organizational culture and
employee retention’,The Academy
of Management Journal, Vol. 35, No. 5, pp.1035-1056.
Ø Kotter, J. (2012). Corporate culture and performance. New
York, NY: Free Press.
Ø Sarros,J.C.,
Cooper, B.K. and
Santora, J.C. (2008)
‘Building a climate
for innovation through leadership and organization
culture’Journal of Leadership & Organizational studies, Vol.15, No. 2, pp.
145-158.
Ø Bulach, C., Lunenburg, F. C., & Potter, L. (2012).
Creating a culture for high-performing
schools: A comprehensive approach to school reform (2nd ed.). Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Great article about value of culture in HRM terms. From this article, learned about HR's role, organizational culture. Well detailed about the topic and learned many things from this article. Nice job.
ReplyDeleteIt is always value added that HR activities as most important and article will explain to gain more added points
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderful blog. You have taken an organization and linked to HR concepts. I think, toxic culture is common in Sri Lanka but hire and fire culture is not common amongmany Sri Lankan organizations.
ReplyDeleteVery well versed blog on your trade. Really enjoyed the facts.
ReplyDeletethis also relationship with your industry.you have tactfully described how implements the cultural organization to your industry
ReplyDeleteOrganizational culture is manifested in the typical characteristics of the organization, in other words, organizational culture should be regarded as the right way in which things are done or problems should be understood in the organization.
ReplyDeleteGood article. Interesting to read this post. You have shared valuable information throuh your post
ReplyDelete