Free Custom «What is organizational culture» Essay Paper

Organizational culture is based on implementation of accepted ethical principles. Non-implementation of principles means that an organization can collapse.

Soltair Company manufactures clay products. I worked in sales in its department for a couple of months. During that period I witnessed a process of several dubious transactions. Most of the sales had serious irregularities. In addition, the number of workers in the company did not tally with the official list. Ghost workers existed on the payroll. The ensuing grand corruption affected company’s growth. Revenues and profits kept dwindling with time. This made the company undergo drastic measures in order to prevent it from collapsing. Some workers were sacked with an aim of trimming expected management and operational costs. I was also among those dismissed. However, the layoffs only aggravated the situation since sacked workers were the most productive ones. Instead of determining the cause of the problem, the company adopted a short-term strategy and, as a result,   began falling apart day by day. Moreover, corruption involving top-level managers went on unabated (Calle, 2003).

It is evident from Soltair’s scenario that a culture of an organization is determined by the manner in which ethical principles are implemented and upheld. A strong corporate culture is only achievable if an organization institutes a code of conduct to govern behavior of employees (Smith, 2002). The code of conduct ensures that employees exercise their mandate according to what is stipulated and not to what they design. Employees will then refrain from engaging in unethical acts, which easily become part of an organization as it happened to Soltair (MacDonald, 2004). Even though establishment of chain of command in an organization is bound to promote bureaucracy, it provides leeway about checks and balances.