Role of Culture in Organizations

Running head: ROLE OF CULTURE IN ORGANISATIONS
ROLE OF CULTURE IN ORGANISATIONS
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ROLE OF CULTURE IN ORGANISATIONS
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Literature review..............................................................................................................................3
Implications.....................................................................................................................................7
Recommendations............................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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ROLE OF CULTURE IN ORGANISATIONS
Introduction
Organizational culture is significantly dependent on the culture of the country where the
organization operates. People, belonging to a nation with distinct cultural background, come
together to build an organization and their behavior, which is often an outcome of the culture of
the societies, acts as a foundation of organizational culture. Hence, organizational culture often
reflects the characteristics of the culture of the home country (Gordon 2017). However, with
increased globalization, the international economy has expanded significantly and has involved
cross-country business operations. The number of multinational corporations has been increasing
significantly and mode of business operations is including various methods, such as, joint
ventures, mergers and acquisition, franchisee, licensing, and direct purchase etc. As these firms
are expanding their businesses across borders, the difference in national culture play an
important role in affecting the organizational culture. The nature of leadership, teamwork,
decision making process and many more business operations are often affected by the change in
country cultures. Thus, as stated by Hofstede, the national and the organizational cultures are
highly different phenomena. While national culture depends on anthropology, the organizational
culture depends on sociology. Organizations cannot affect or change the national culture, rather
they can only use it to determine the nature of the organizational culture (Taras 2017). The
concept of culture is intangible and it cannot be applied at the individual level. However, culture
affects the personality and behavior of individuals and that in turn affects the organizational
culture (Macmillan 2018). This report will provide a synopsis of the role of culture in the
organizations. The paper will focus on whether or not country of origin impacts organizational
culture. Various scholarly articles and media articles will be explored and analyzed to conduct
the discussion on the above mentioned topic. Based on the literature review, implications on the
organizational culture, managerial recommendations and conclusions will be provided. The
literature will be supported by providing examples from the Coca-Cola Company, which is an
American multinational beverage company, currently operating in more than 200 countries.
Hence, citing examples of impact of national culture on the organizational culture of Coca-Cola
will be relevant for this report.

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ROLE OF CULTURE IN ORGANISATIONS
Literature review
National culture is a distinctive concept. It differs in terms of religion, language, food
habits, attires, customs, rituals, and many other factors that influence people to act or behave in a
particular way and hold the values. On the other hand, organizational culture reflects the
ideologies, values, assumptions, beliefs and vision of the founder of the organization (Driskill
2018). According to Huang and Crotts (2019), behavior of the employees of an organization is
often determined by the organizational culture, which in turn is affected to some extent by the
national culture. This can be precisely explained with the help of cultural dimension theory by
Hofstede. There are six dimensions that illustrate the attitude of people in a particular nation and
also explains why the behavior of people and cultures are different across nations. Those
dimensions are shown in the image below.
Figure 1: Hofstede cultural dimensions
(Source: Huang and Crotts 2019)