MGT100 - Organizational Culture: Research, Analysis, and Insights

This report analyzes Michael D. Watkins' article on organizational culture, focusing on the central argument that there is a lack of consensus on the definition of organizational culture and its impact on behavior within firms. The report identifies the assumptions made in the research, such as the relevance and expertise of participants in a LinkedIn discussion, and the limitations, including the lack of focused research questions, methodology, and defined sample population, which impact the validity and reliability of the article. Furthermore, the report includes an analysis of a real-world business, discussing its exhibited organizational culture and providing recommendations for improvement, demonstrating practical application of the concepts discussed in the article. The report concludes with a critical evaluation of the article's arguments and provides valuable insights into organizational culture.

MGT100
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ARTICLE RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
1. The main argument that is presented in this article surrounds around the energetic
debate that is provoked over organizational culture. While there has been a common
conformity that organizational culture prevails and that it exerts a vital role in shaping
the behavior within firms, however there is insignificant concurrence on what
organizational culture truly is, how it shapes behavior and whether leaders can modify
prevalent organizational culture. Though there exists a rational definition of
organizational culture, but it does not presents any significant correlation or
understanding to other elements of a firm like organization structure and incentive
systems. So the argument emphasized through this article as opined by Watkins
(2013) surrounds over defining the actual meaning of the organizational culture so
that it establishes definite connections to relevant components of an organization in
shaping behavior as well as understanding and response of people included within a
firm. It is argued that defining exact and absolute meaning of organizational culture is
significant so that an acceptable interpretation is attained which will allow firms to
grasp on the adequate ways by which issues in organizational culture can be
diagnosed and even designed or developed to build improved cultures.
2. The main assumption of the research presented in this article as stated by Watkins
(2013) was that varied perspectives and ideas gathered from discussion around
defining the actual meaning of organizational culture as presented by participants
were relevant, unbiased and included expertise of participants. Another assumption
was scope of the research synthesis which was based on multiple response of
participants engaged in a random LinkedIn discussion, which was used to explore
definition of culture. The author assumed that ideas contributed by participants were
specific to the investigation of this research and aimed to define meaning of
organizational culture with a reasonable agreement and universal perspective.
Moreover, the main limitations identified in this article were that the definition of
organizational culture were presented by random participation that was encouraged by
the author of article, Michael D. Watkins around defining the actual meaning of
organizational culture in context that it corelates with other vital elements of an
organization such as structure and incentive process. The discussion was randomly
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started on LinkedIn and so the research presented in this article did not include any
focused research questions as well as definite methodology for research, which are
identified limitations. Another limitation of the research that was presented was
response collected randomly from participants which did not included defining the
relevance of sample population, as such validity and reliability of this article are
major limitations.
References
Watkins., M. D., (2013). What is organizational Culture? And why should we care? Harvard
Business Review [Online] Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-is-
organizational-culture Accessed on 16 April, 2020
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