There are several factors that affect the organizational culture of a business. Elements of organizational culture that impact different types of culture include:

• Vision: The overall purpose of an organization’s existence is a major element of its corporate culture. A strong corporate culture must be consistent with the organization’s vision, ensuring employees and managers understand the strategic direction of the business.

• Values: A firm’s values statement specifies its beliefs and moral standards. These are essential elements of its organizational culture. Values guide the firm to towards its overall vision.

• Practices: What a firm does, and how it goes about this, is an element of its organizational culture. Approaches to time management and dress code are examples of practices that influence organizational culture. Its behaviour should mirror putting its values statement into practice. For example, an organization that claims to be supportive of sustainable practices must be environmentally friendly in its operations.

• People: This element of organizational culture refers to all aspects of human resources in an organization, e.g. the approach used to hire (recruit) employees, attitudes towards staff training and development, approaches to teamwork, and protocol for dismissing workers.

• Traditions: Each organization has its own history and customs, signifying ‘the way things are done around here’. The Walt Disney Company, for example, prides itself on making magical memories for generations of children around the world. The IBO has a tradition of building a better world through a framework of international education. Celebrations and codes of conduct are also part of a firm’s traditions.

• Leadership styles: The way in which an organization is led is a major element of organizational culture. For example, employees at Google are empowered to run their own projects and encouraged to make mistakes (just not too many that are costly!) By contrast, the organizational culture in the army or military would be very different, as a different leadership style is needed.

There are numerous elements of organizational culture

Advantages of a strong and cohesive organizational culture include:

• Helps to create unity and purpose.

• Helps to lessen misunderstandings and miscommunications, thus minimising the chances of conflict in the workplace.

• Ultimately, a pleasant working environment due to a cohesive and harmonious culture leads to improve levels of motivation, higher labour productivity and greater staff retention.

A culture gap occurs if there is a difference between an organization’s desired culture and its actual culture. This can easily cause a weak organizational culturem, which has disadvantages that could lead to:

• A lack of clarity for workers, which can lead to disharmony and misunderstandings.

• Negativity and conflict within the workplace.

• Lower productivity and profitability.

A popular model to describe the various cultures within an organization is Professor Charles Handy’s Gods of Management: The Changing Work of Organizations (1978). Using the Greek gods Zeus, Apollo, Athena, and Dionysus, Charles Handy demonstrated four distinct types of organizational cultures that can exist within all businesses: power, role, task, and person cultures.

Zeus - Power culture

Zeus was the first of the Greek gods, and extremely powerful as the god of thunder and lightening. In a power culture (also known as a club culture), an individual (such as the founder or a figurehead like Zeus), or a small group of senior staff, makes decisions for the organisation. Power and authority are concentrated in the hands of the elite few at the top of the organization, who strive to maintain absolute control over their employees, i.e. leaders are autocratic. Communication is also highly centralized, so procedures and formal rules do not matter so much as decisions are made quickly, without bureaucratic processes to slow things down.

Organizations with a power culture are driven by results, which act as the best indicator of the value each and every employee. Due to centralized decision-making, organizations with a power culture are relatively cheap to operate, and decisions can be made quickly.

However, a power culture can have negative effects on staff morale, and hence productivity levels. It can also limit the level of staff loyalty, thus cause higher rates of labour turnover.

 Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, led the company in a power-culture way. Watch this movie trailer that depicts some of the professional and personal sacrifices that he made in creating one of the world’s most admired brands:

Apollo - Role culture

Apollo was the son of Zeus and had many roles as a Greek god, including archery, art, knowledge, light, medicine, music, poetry, and sun. In a role culture, operations and organizational norms are underpinned by formal structures and procedures. Clear policies and hierarchies exist in order to facilitate the smooth running of the business. Workers have clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and operate within clear rules and guidelines.

This culture is common in bureaucratic organizations with tall organizational structures and long chains of command, e.g. the civil service, public sector organizations, tax agencies, the military, local government, and central government. Other examples include colleges and universities, motor insurance firms, health institutions, and accounting firms. A worker’s responsibilities and authority are determined by their respective level in the organizational hierarchy.

Handy used a temple as a metaphor for a role culture, as it is old, strong, and well established

Organizations with a role culture benefit from clarity of direction, clear policies and procedures, and stability. However, a drawback of a role culture is that there is not much initiative among the employees, especially as managers look at the past in order to predict the future. Hence, such organizations are not well prepared to respond to radical changes in the external business environment.

Athena - Task culture

Athena was the Greek goddess of important tasks such as strategic warfare, wisdom, law and justice, and civilization. In a task culture, teams of experts are empowered to complete a project or tackle a problem with their particular skills. The role of senior managers in such a culture is to ensure the team consists of the best mix of people, and that they are supported to achieve their objectives. The success of organizations with a task culture depends largely on group dynamics, team cohesiveness, and interpersonal skills in the workplace.

Teamwork is an important aspect of a task culture

An Athenian (task) culture is appropriate in dynamic, creative, innovative and forward-looking organizations. Examples include management consultancy firms and ICT companies.

However, this type of culture can be expensive to maintain (paying expert teams to work on particular tasks). Hiring, remunerating and retaining industry experts is not always feasible or sustainable. Over time, the organizational culture is likely to develop routines and common practices, i.e. it is likely to adopt a role culture.

Dionysus - Person culture

Also the son of Zeus, Dionysus was the Greek son of wine, winemaking, and theatre. In a Dionysian person culture, people regard themselves or their skills set as being more important than the organization itself. Effectively, this means the organization only exists in order to help individuals to achieve their personal and professional goals. In a person culture (sometimes referred to as existential culture), the business values each person as an expert, and relies on their skills and experiences for the organization to succeed and thrive.

The organization employs a cluster of individuals with similar skills, qualifications, talents, and expertise. Examples include private health professionals in a health clinic, general practitioners (GPs) in a surgery, accountants in an auditor’s firm, management consultants, and solicitors in a law firm.

A person culture consists of independent professionals

Similar to organizations with a task culture, organizations with a person culture also offer very generous financial and non-financial remuneration packages to recruit and retain staff. However, as a person culture depends entirely on individuals (rather than teams) to succeed, such a culture is more dominant and permanent. Apart from being an expensive model, organizations with a Dionysian person culture often have to deal with the contrasting personalities and egos of talented individuals.

Watch this video to review and consolidate your understanding of Charles Handy's Gods of Management model of types of organizational cultures.

Irrespective of the type of culture that exists or prevails in an organization, managers need to cultivate the ideal corporate culture in order to achieve its goals. Being successful in business requires a high cultural quotient and knowledge to motivate employees to achieve these goals.

 Review Quiz

To test your understanding of this topic, identify the correct god of management from the clues given below.

No.	Statement	Greek god of management
1.	All decision making authority and control are held by the leader or board of directors in the organization.	Zeus
2.	An organizational culture dominated by formal hierarchical structures, rules and regulations, as well as responsibilities assigned to individuals.	Apollo
3.	The interest of individuals within the organization is placed above that of the organization itself.	Dionysus
4.	A role culture often found in bureaucratic organizations, such as government departments and agencies.	Apollo
5.	Teams are provided with clear goals, with their performance being measured by the results achieved.	Athena
6.	An organizational culture dominated by individuals who strive to achieve their personal goals.	Dionysus
7.	There are inflexible administrative formalities.	Apollo
8.	Involves the use of matrix organizational structures to achieve organizational objectives.	Athena
9.	The success of the organization is dependent on the skills, talents, creativity, and drive of individuals rather than teams or the management.	Dionysus
10.	Formal chains of authority, command, and responsibility.	Apollo

 Teacher only box

Teachers can download a PDF copy of this quiz to use in the classroom.

You may find this poster useful as a revision tool or classroom poster display. It has been created by Charuvi Agarwal who studies at Chinmaya International Residential School, India. Many thanks for Charuvi and her teacher Rashmi Unnikrishnan for sharing this with the InThinking community!