Organizational culture

Organizational culture encompasses the shared norms, values, corporate language and behaviors - observed in schools, universities, not-for-profit groups, government agencies, and businesses - reflecting their core values and strategic direction.^[1]^[2] Alternative terms include business culture, corporate culture and company culture.^[3] The term corporate culture emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s.^[4]^[5] It was used by managers, sociologists, and organizational theorists in the 1980s.^[6]^[7]

Organizational culture influences how people interact, how decisions are made (or avoided), the context within which cultural artifacts are created, employee attachment, the organization's competitive advantage, and the internal alignment of its units. It is distinct from national culture or the broader cultural background of its workforce.

Based on that organizational identity is described as statements which are important to the organization and help them differentiate from other organizations, such as management philosophy. It influences all stakeholders, leaders and employees alike.^[8]

^ Cameron, Newton; Ruth, Knight (2022-02-04). Handbook of Research Methods for Organisational Culture. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78897-626-8.
^ González-Torres, Thais; Gelashvili, Vera; Martínez-Navalón, Juan Gabriel; Herrera-Enríquez, Giovanni (2023-09-15). "Editorial: Organizational culture and climate: new perspectives and challenges". Frontiers in Psychology. 14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1267945. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 10542401. PMID 37790231.
^ Graham, John R.; Grennan, Jillian; Harvey, Campbell R.; Rajgopal, Shivaram (2022). "Corporate culture: Evidence from the field". Journal of Financial Economics. 146 (2): 552–593. doi:10.1016/j.jfineco.2022.07.008.
^ "Culture Clash: When Corporate Culture Fights Strategy, It Can Cost You". Arizona State University. March 30, 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-11-10. "Culture is everything", said Lou Gerstner, the CEO who pulled IBM from near ruin in the 1990s.
^ Unlike many expressions that emerge in business jargon, the term spread to newspapers and magazines. Few usage experts object to the term. Over 80 percent of usage experts accept the sentence The new management style is a reversal of GE's traditional corporate culture, in which virtually everything the company does is measured in some form and filed away somewhere.", The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
^ One of the first to point to the importance of culture for organizational analysis and the intersection of culture theory and organization theory is Linda Smircich in her article Concepts of Culture and Organizational Analysis in 1983. See Smircich, Linda (1983). "Concepts of Culture and Organizational Analysis". Administrative Science Quarterly. 28 (3): 339–358. doi:10.2307/2392246. hdl:10983/26094. JSTOR 2392246.
^ Farish, Phillip (1982). "Career Talk: Corporate Culture". Hispanic Engineer (1). The term "Corporate Culture" is fast losing the academic ring it once had among U.S. manager. Sociologists and anthropologists popularized the word "culture" in its technical sense, which describes overall behavior patterns in groups. But corporate managers, untrained in sociology jargon, found it difficult to use the term unselfconsciously.
^ Lin, Y.Y. (March 2004). "Organizational Identity and Its Implication on Organization Development". ERIC: Institute of Educational Sciences. Retrieved March 31, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

[1] Cameron, Newton; Ruth, Knight (2022-02-04). Handbook of Research Methods for Organisational Culture. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78897-626-8.

[2] González-Torres, Thais; Gelashvili, Vera; Martínez-Navalón, Juan Gabriel; Herrera-Enríquez, Giovanni (2023-09-15). "Editorial: Organizational culture and climate: new perspectives and challenges". Frontiers in Psychology. 14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1267945. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 10542401. PMID 37790231.

[3] Graham, John R.; Grennan, Jillian; Harvey, Campbell R.; Rajgopal, Shivaram (2022). "Corporate culture: Evidence from the field". Journal of Financial Economics. 146 (2): 552–593. doi:10.1016/j.jfineco.2022.07.008.

[Arizona-4] "Culture Clash: When Corporate Culture Fights Strategy, It Can Cost You". Arizona State University. March 30, 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-11-10. "Culture is everything", said Lou Gerstner, the CEO who pulled IBM from near ruin in the 1990s.

[term-5] Unlike many expressions that emerge in business jargon, the term spread to newspapers and magazines. Few usage experts object to the term. Over 80 percent of usage experts accept the sentence The new management style is a reversal of GE's traditional corporate culture, in which virtually everything the company does is measured in some form and filed away somewhere.", The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

[Linda-6] One of the first to point to the importance of culture for organizational analysis and the intersection of culture theory and organization theory is Linda Smircich in her article Concepts of Culture and Organizational Analysis in 1983. See Smircich, Linda (1983). "Concepts of Culture and Organizational Analysis". Administrative Science Quarterly. 28 (3): 339–358. doi:10.2307/2392246. hdl:10983/26094. JSTOR 2392246.

[hispanicengineer-7] Farish, Phillip (1982). "Career Talk: Corporate Culture". Hispanic Engineer (1). The term "Corporate Culture" is fast losing the academic ring it once had among U.S. manager. Sociologists and anthropologists popularized the word "culture" in its technical sense, which describes overall behavior patterns in groups. But corporate managers, untrained in sociology jargon, found it difficult to use the term unselfconsciously.

[8] Lin, Y.Y. (March 2004). "Organizational Identity and Its Implication on Organization Development". ERIC: Institute of Educational Sciences. Retrieved March 31, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

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