What Do You Know About The Organizational Culture In The Internal Environment Of Management?

The internal environment of every organization contains another potent force:
organizational culture, the set of underlying values and norms shared by members of an organization that form the foundation of the management system and of management and employee practices. In corporations, this force is often referred to as corporate culture. The shared values of organizational culture call attention to what is important and shape the patterns of behavior that become norms guiding the way things are done in a particular organization.

The organization's culture is deeply rooted in its past but is also affected by the present and by expectations for the future. For example, everyone at Medtronic, a medical products firm in Minneapolis best known for its heart pacemakers, can recite the story of how Earl Bakken and his brother-in-law founded the company in a garage and had high hopes for applying technology to help humanity. From this idealistic beginning grew a paternalistic company with an emphasis on home-grown scientific ingenuity. As the company expanded, it ran into competition, developed profitability problems, and needed a more consistent method of product development. During the 1980s, Medtronic shifted toward an emphasis on profits and on personal and organizational performance. To combat competitive threats, management pursued controlled but steady growth through diversification and acquisition. Now the organizational culture stresses profitability as well as the founder's passion for improving human well-fare.