FEATURED PAPER

Organizational Culture in Leadership and Management

By Ghirmai T Kefela, Ph.D.

USA

Objectives and Scope

This paper reviews the existing literature on organizational leadership and management structure, culture, technical process approach, constraints and challenges. Leaders focus to find the meaning and purpose in their organization, and to link their individual efforts to those of the entire company workforce. This paper further argues that certain organizational cultural attributes contribute to the shaping of future courses of action, able to discover, to amplify and value the employees’ innovative potential based on knowledge creation, acquiring, sharing and use. Next, this paper points out how knowledge management and organization culture develop  on a daily basis only when the leader succeeds to transform the organization core business, and knows how to drive the employee’s productivity and firm performance levels. The main challenge is when knowledge becomes a factor that shapes the characteristics of leaders, employees, and the economic power of organization. This article provides a process for mapping the organizational culture and describing its culture as one of the most difficult actions for a leader, and how it can be better valued. We define culture as unifying and refer to the processes that bind the organization together. The idea of corporate culture reinforces the unifying strengths of central goals and creates a sense of common responsibility.

Keywords: Organizational culture, constraints and challenges, leaders characteristics, organizational change

The Emerging of Organizational Culture 

One of the primary responsibilities of strategic leaders is to create and maintain the organizational characteristics that reward and encourage collective effort. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is organizational culture. "The grand total of all the objects, ideas, knowledge, ways of doing things, habits, values, and attitudes which each generation in a society passes on to the next is what the anthropologist refers to as the culture of a group" (Nord, 1972). The famous Dutch behavioral scientist, Geert Hofstede defined culture “as the collective mental programming of a people in an environment". His later definition was "that culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another". Kotter and Heskett (1992) of the Harvard Business School define organizational culture, "as an interdependent set of values and ways of behaving that are common to a community and tend to perpetuate them, sometimes over a long period of time". Robbins (1989) defines organizational culture is also as "a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations. This is a set of characteristics that the organization values."

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About the Author Ghirmai T. Kefela, PhD Author Prof. Ghirmai T Kefela has been working in Operational Management in the travel industry in the USA for over 20 years, with customer-focused experiences in sales and services delivery, and 10 years of experience in accounting and taxation.  He was also a Controller Associate for 10 years in the Finance Department of ADCO Oil Co., Abu Dhabi, UAE. Dr. Kefela earned his Ph.D. from Breyer State University, Los Angeles, USA, (courses focused on global operations, business research, multinational management, and international policy and strategy), and holds MBA in Banking and Finance from Columbus University, MS, USA. His primary training, at both the doctoral and graduate levels, was in applied microeconomic theory, and banking and finance covering the informational and agency problems within emerging financial markets in developing countries. Professor Kefela has published a number of articles on core ideas from microeconomic theory related to human development; to assessing and promoting safe and sound banking systems, including the policy, legal and regulatory framework which affect developing countries; and trade with sub-Saharan Africa and its impact on African‘s development as a financing mechanism.  His areas of special interest in teaching are: Microeconomics, Banking and Finance, Development Economics, Poverty & Human Development, etc.   He is an editorial reviewer for several national and international journals.  Ghirmai can be reached at Gtesfai@hotmail.com, Gkefela@live.com.