Organizational values and Culture
Organizational values are the generally accepted standards or norms that guide the
relationships between the members of an organization. All organizations have different values and
cultures that help identify them. They could be written values and are passed on to new members of the
organization or there could be normative values that are not necessarily written down but are strictly
adhered to by the members of the organization. The level of performance of any organization can be
traced through its values and culture and so different performance expectations of an organization
entail altering of some of the organizations values so as to achieve the set objectives.
To this end, policies are implemented to change an organization’s values and culture. The
personal values of all employees influence their work performance. However, when it comes to dealing
with organization values and culture, corporate culture should be more under consideration as it has
been seen to bring some significant level of cohesion in the organization. There are a number of policies
that can be used to influence organization values and culture. The most important policies are those
that educate the members of the organization about the organization’s values and culture. An example
of an educative internal policy is the assignment of e=new organization entrants to senior members of
an organization to be their understudies. Other policies are statutory policies that do not have as great
an impact on educative policies.
Some policies may not achieve their intended outcomes and this can bring disharmony in an
organization. Policies that may infringe on personal values of employees such as policies that provide for
specific religious beliefs in a multi-cultural organization bring about disharmony in an organization. To
this end, it is important that an effective policy development framework is adopted to mitigate such
incidences. A good framework for policy formulation is provided in the McKnight (2009) and we will
follow its standard procedure to develop policy on dealing with the problem of misconstruction
between personal and organizational values. The intended outcome of the policy formulated would be
to provide a basis upon which the personal values of the members of an organization are all considered
in the formulation of organization values. There needs to be some cohesion between the different
personal values held by the members of the organization.
The coping method would require that different teams in the organization are tasked with the
ascertainment of the underlying personal values that all members of the organization conform to.
Putting this in a systematic format where conflicting values can later on be analyzed and resolved. The
potential consequences of such conflict in values are put into question while developing the
organization values. It would also be necessary for the organization to seek for reference from other
organizations that have undergone restructuring of their values and culture. How did the members
cope? Did they adopt the new values positively or negatively?
After all relevant information is obtained, review of the values is undertaken. The desired
organization objectives are matched with the personal values of the members of the organization. Any
conflict arising between the desired organization values and the personal values of a considerable
number of members of the organization is duly reflected upon and a compromise is founded.
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Negotiations then take place between the members of the organization and the leaders of the
organization, where internal policies that that are consensually accepted by both parties are duly
written down and presented. How all members of the organization will cope with the new policies is the
brought under review. The information initially obtained is probed further to identify where there will
be potential upheaval between the internal policies to be set and the personal values of some of the
members of the organization.
The next stage of policy formulation is the enforcement authority of the new internal policies of
the organization. A board constituting some members of the executive and some lower ranking
members of the organization would be desirable. Normally, an expert in policy implementation and
enforce who is not a member of the organization maybe added on to the board to provide knowledge
and direction on the approach to be taken. The expert may also take up the role of being the mediator
for any conflict arising between the executive and members of the organization.
Finally, evaluation of the implemented internal policies is undertaken. An appropriate basis of
evaluation is identified, which in this case is the desired values the organization intended to be
identified with prior to the development and formulation of the new organization values. It is the
responsibility of the implementation board to evaluate the effectiveness of the internal policies
adopted. Any improvements to the policies should be recommended by the board and a suitable level of
adjustments is undertaken based on critical analysis of potential outcomes of adopting the adjustments.
The coping technique can be applied to the formulation of a wide array of policies such as both internal
and external policies.
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References
Halász, G., & Michel, A. (2011). Key Competences in Europe: interpretation, policy formulation
and implementation. European Journal of Education, 46(3), 289-306.
James, T. E., & Jorgensen, P. D. (2009). Policy knowledge, policy formulation, and change:
Revisiting a foundational question. Policy Studies Journal, 37(1), 141-162.