How Can We Read An Organizational Culture?

The ability to read an organization culture can be valuable skills. For example if you are looking for a job to choose an employer whose culture is compatible to your values and in which you feel comfortable. If you can accurately assess the potential employer culture before you makes your job decision. You may be able to save lot of anxiety and reduce the likelihood of making poor choice. Similarly you will undoubtedly have business transactions with numerous organizations during your professional career such as selling a product and service , negotiating a contract, arranging a joint work project, or merely seeking out who controls certain decisions in the organizations.

The ability to assess another organization's culture can be a definite plus in successfully performing those pursuits.  You can be more effective at reading an organization's culture if you use the following behaviours  Observe the physical surroundings , pay attention to signs, posters, pictures , photos, style of dress, length of hair, degree of openness between offices and office furnishing and arrangements. Make note of those to whom you met. Was it the person who would be your immediate supervisor? You may be met with the potential colleague. The degree of people they met regularly. So in this way you can assess the culture of any organization.

Organizational culture is visible through the formal and informal structure of any business. Formally, you can see it from the dress code, language, and presentation of employees. Informally it is depicted from various aspects like interiors, displays, rumours and stories of about the company. In other words, it can be judged by mainly observing the working style of company and its employees.
Organizational cultures of companies in fact define and demonstrate the mission or credo of companies. If an organizational culture does not reflect the main philosophy of company or its mission in business market, that culture is practically unacceptable for the company's stakeholders.
Different companies make serious efforts to demonstrate their organizational culture to the public generally and to its customers specifically. For this reason, support of various promotional tools is taken. Some companies develop corporate public relation departments, some hire celebrities and other spend huge advertising or publicity campaigns to promote the required cultural stuff depicting the company and its over all goals. The companies adopt a variety of techniques in this regard. Companies like P&G, IBM, Walt Disney, British Airways, Shell, Voda Phone, Sony, BBC, CNN promote their organizational culture in a highly assertive manner. Many CEOs  have the belief of promoting organizational culture for the better business and rapid success.