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The organization I work for is Soft Craft Systems, an Information Technology (IT) company based in Tokai, Cape Town. The company promotes a family like culture and has grown out of this. In the seven years Soft Craft has been in existence, the company has grown from two to the current twenty employees. There is some gender bias in that, of Soft Craft’s twenty employees, only two are females. The directors have been looking at ways of addressing this imbalance, yet females in the IT sector seem to be higher sought after, so they have not found it easy to begin building a more balanced workforce. I have been with Soft Craft for three and a half years so have been part of some interesting developmental phases within the company as we seek to move forward in the business world. Management encourages the entrepreneurial spirit within the employees and is very supportive of any initiative shown on the part of the employees. As a result, employees are given some amount of freedom in that they are able to explore various ideas with the backing of the company. This has been borne out of a desire to expand the company into a successful business enterprise. Creativity and innovation are thus encouraged within the employees. Organizational culture can be defined as a cognitive framework consisting of attitudes, values, behavioural norms, and expectations shared by the organizational members (Shein in Baron & Greenberg, 1999). At the root of any organizational culture is a set of core characteristics that are collectively valued by the members. Characteristics that are considered to be particularly important are sensitivity to the needs of customers and employees, freedom to initiate new ideas, willingness to tolerate taking risks and openness to communication options (Martin in Baron & Greenberg, 1999). After doing an employee survey was conducted among the employees last year, Soft Craft has been addressing all the above-mentioned areas in developing a culture that best represents everyone that is part of the organization. While most organisations typically have a dominant culture, this culture is normally made up of a number of subcultures, depending on the size of the organization. A dominant culture reflects the organisation’s core values and the dominant perceptions that are generally shared throughout the organisation. An organisation’s culture provides a sense of identity for the members and the more clearly an organisation’s shared perceptions and values are defined, the more strongly people can associate themselves with the organisation’s mission and can feel that they are a vital part of it. A second important function of culture is generating commitment to the organisation’s mission. When there is a strong, overarching culture, people feel they are part of a larger, well-defined whole and are involved in the entire organisation’s work. Bigger than any one individual’s interests, culture reminds people what their organisation is all about. A third important function of culture is to clarify and to reinforce standards of behaviour, which is essential for newcomers, but is also beneficial for seasoned veterans. In essence, culture guides the employees’ words and deeds, thus making it clear what they might do or say in any given situation. In this sense, it provides stability to behaviour, both what an individual might do at different times and what different individuals might do at the same time. One system for categorizing varieties of organizational culture is known as the double S cube, which characterizes culture along two independent dimensions, both of which begin with the letter “S”, sociability and solidarity. The sociability dimension is a measure of the friendliness of an organisation’s members. Among the first things a new employee notices about a company is its degree of sociability. Some companies are very friendly and have people who always socialize and go out together (i.e. high sociability). Others are composed of people who largely refrain from socializing and who stick to themselves (i.e. low sociability). Sociability has both a positive side and a negative side. On the positive side, sociability helps to promote creativity, because it encourages people to work together in teams and to share information, there by making them open to new ideas (Amabile in Baron & Greenberg, 1999). On the other side, sociability may cause workers to form informal cliques that can become so influential they actually subvert the decision-making process. In keeping with this idea, members of highly sociable groups may be reluctant to disagree or to criticize each other, thus possibly leading to groupthink. Solidarity focuses on the extent to which people share a common understanding of the organisation’s tasks and goals. In organisations with a high degree of solidarity, employees tend to stick together in a highly focused way to accomplish an agreed-on goal.
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