Abstract
M.Comm.
In our ever-changing, fast paced world, competitive relationships can shift quickly when organizations respond too slowly to increased competition in their industry group. Succeeding in such a competitive and changing environment demands that organizations be reshaped to meet the challenges and competitive realities.
The changes organizations are being forced to make merely to stay competitive are so fundamental that they must take root in an organization's culture and be managed. The idea of managing organizational culture is still quite new to most managers - at best they have a vague sense of what it means. They lack insight into the concept organizational culture, the complexity of integrating organizational culture and strategy and the managing of organizational cultural change.
The lack of managerial insight can be attributed to the fact that organizational culture wears many cloaks and the fact that various definitions are being used to describe the concept. A clear conceptual understanding of the terminology is essential if the role and influence of organizational culture in the change process is to be understood, therefore various definitions are being focused on.
Due to the changes taking place in the environment in which organizations operate, managers will increasingly find that they are confronted with major questions of how to position their organizations in a new business environment and how to change fundamentally the organizational culture. The interaction that takes place between organizational culture and organizational strategy in formulating and implementing organizational strategy is discussed.
Whether organizational culture can be changed successfully has led to a debate among researchers. In order to implement strategic change the organization needs to manage cultural change to achieve congruency between culture and strategy.
Organizational leadership is a critical factor in the change process and is analysed with reference to the role to be played by management in the creation of shared patterns of beliefs and values. Various managerial systems exist for achieving change within the organizational culture and it is essential that managers use a combination of these systems. Systems such as communication, reward systems and human resource management are discussed to establish their role in the process.
The aim of the study is therefore to gain a clear insight in the concept organizational culture, the interaction of organizational culture and strategy and the change of organizational culture in the ever-changing business environment by focusing on various factors which are present in the afore-mentioned processes.