Describing the Social and Cultural Dimensions in My Organization Essay

Social and cultural theories strive to explain how people relate to each other and/or the surrounding environment. Organizational culture represents a common perception held by the organization’s member. This was made explicit when we defined culture as a system of shared meaning. Therefore, those individuals with different backgrounds or at different levels in the organization will tend to describe the organization’s culture in similar terms. Most large organizations have a dominant culture and numerous sets of subcultures. A dominant culture expresses the core values that are shared by a majority of the organization’s members. When we talk about an organization’s culture, we are referring to its dominant culture. It is this macro view of culture that gives an organization its distinct personality. Subcultures tend to develop in large organizations to reflect common problems, situations, or experiences that members face. These subcultures are likely to be defined by department designations and geographical separation. The purchasing department, for example, can have a subculture that is uniquely shared by members of that department. It will include the core values of the dominant culture plus additional values unique to members of the purchasing department. Similarly, an office or unit of the organization that is physically separated from the organization’s main operations may take on a different personality. Again, the core values are essentially retained but modified to reflect the separated unit’s distinct situation. If organizations had no dominant culture and were composed only of numerous subcultures, the value of organizational culture as an independent variable would be significantly lessened because there would be no uniformity in the interpretation of the values that represented appropriate and inappropriate behavior. It is the â€Å"shared meaning† aspect of culture that makes it such a potent device for guiding and shaping values in the cultural behavior. But it is not to be ignored that the reality which many organizations contained also has subcultures that can influence the behavior of their members. The field of sociology focuses on cultures that are ethnically or geographically defined. However, the study of any culture is referred to as â€Å"a group of people who work (or play) together and journey towards a shared meaning and assumption†(Griswold, p.133). Griswold (1994) also shared that â€Å"culture† is one of those words that people use all the time but have trouble defining. Peterson (1979) states that when sociologists talk about culture, they usually mean one of four things: norms, values, beliefs, or expressive symbols. Norms are the way people behave in a given society; values are what people hold dear; beliefs are how people think the universe operates and expressive symbols are representations of the culture. Moreover, Lincoln and Kalleberg (1990) hold that â€Å"the quality of relationships between workers and their co-workers is positively associated with commitment and satisfaction.† If the people within a school do not connect and work together toward a common goal or passion, the culture is said to be stagnant or unproductive. Lincoln and Kalleberg provide three models of organizations. The consensus model holds shared goals and values within an organization that are the norm and dissidence is a problem requiring correction. The cleavage model has distinct groups within an organization that have different interests, especially fault lines that exist between job levels. The fragmentation model shows that are riddled with ambiguity where people hold multiple perspectives. It is plausible that most working environment can fall under all three models or have factions of each model within one department. I am now attached with SMK (P) Methodist, Pulau Pinang as an operational clerk. My services here include the basic operation of the school administration and also involved accounting for the staff and stock inventories in the school. I am under the Ministry of Education and the Jabatan Pelajaran Pulau Pinang. My school consists of 42 academic staff, 8 non-academic staff and 640 students. We have a unique ethnic diversity whereby most of the teachers are Chinese, four Indians and ten Malays. The students are also diversified into the three main ethnicity in Malaysia with minimal number of mixed ethnic students. My Principal is a Chinese lady. Her name is Wong Soon Kee. She is a very fierce and strict head of department. I do not have a very close rapport with her. She does not have very much concern for the teachers as well. It has been a very stressful environment for me and most of the staff here. But, the teachers have been very helpful and understanding to me. They are very friendly and accommodative towards me. At the office, there is a typist and a general worker to assist with my work here. This really helps ease my work and release my pressure of working here. My works is about service conformation of the teachers and support workers, prepare salary and pension worksheets and do the necessaries if there is any changes. My work also involved accounting such as preparing the accounts, paying bills, and bookkeeping. Every month, I have to settle the bill and make orders for items needed by the school. Any bills that I received will have to be settled in 2 weeks time which is a very short dateline for me. However, it is the ethics of the Jabatan Pelajaran Pulau Pinang. We have to abide by the rules set by the upper hands. If I have any meeting by the JPN, I will meet up with my friends from other schools. During this time, we will exchange our experiences about work and how to handle certain situations that arise. It is very useful and helped me a lot to improve my performance to do better than before. Every year, auditors from Jabatan Audit Sekolah will come to school to do auditing on the school accounts. They will take a week to check the accounts and identify whether all the transactions are according to the rules or not. Nevertheless, there will never be a session where they had never found any errors. If we had done a lot of errors, our school will be categorized under â€Å"Audit Bersyarat† and the JPN will send us for a course on how to improve our accounting skills to upgrade our performance. With the teachers’ high spirit and determination to guide the students, the PMR (Penilaian Menengah Rendah/Lower Secondary Assessment) and the SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia/Malaysian Certificate of Education) results are very encouraging. Most of the students show fortitude and willpower be it in their academic or co-curricular activities. All these achievements had helped them to be successful and quite a number of them had furthered their studies abroad. As a conclusion, a social and cultural dimension in an organization is important. It is because, it portrays the relationship between employees in completing their daily tasks and ensuring that the tasks are done well with high quality. Culture Beginnings and the Impact of Founders as Leaders spring from three sources: 1. beliefs, values, and assumptions of founders