How you can best define a company's culture?

Organizational culture  on simple sense is the unique personality of a company and it is referred to as its culture.

In groups of people who work together, organizational culture is an invisible but powerful force that influences the behavior of the members of that group.

So, Organizational culture could be defined as a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which governs how people behave in organizations. These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs.

Thus, every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines and boundaries for the behavior of the members of the organization.

However, the elements make up an organization's culture are seven characteristics that range in priority from high to low. Every organization has a distinct value for each of these characteristics, which, when combined, defines the organization's unique culture. Members of organizations make judgments on the value their organization places on these characteristics, and then adjust their behavior to match this perceived set of values.

The seven characteristics of organizational culture are:

1. Innovation (Risk Orientation) - Companies with cultures that place a high value on innovation encourage their employees to take risks and innovate in the performance of their jobs.

2. Attention to Detail (Precision Orientation) - This characteristic of organizational culture dictates the degree to which employees are expected to be accurate in their work.

3. Emphasis on Outcome (Achievement Orientation) - Companies that focus on results, but not on how the results are achieved, place a high emphasis on this value of organizational culture.

4. Emphasis on People (Fairness Orientation) - Companies that place a high value on this characteristic of organizational culture place a great deal of importance on how their decisions will affect the people in their organizations.

5. Teamwork (Collaboration Orientation) - Companies that organize work activities around teams .

6. Aggressiveness (Competitive Orientation) - This characteristic of organizational culture dictates whether group members are expected to be assertive or easygoing when dealing with companies they compete with in the marketplace.

7. Stability (Rule Orientation) - A company whose culture places a high value on stability are rule-oriented, predictable, and bureaucratic in nature.

A corporate culture is what makes your company different.  Culture is defined by differences.   So if you are a start-up and you require everyone to wear suits, than that is part of your corporate culture.  But if you are a start-up and everyone wears t-shirts and plays ping-pong, then that's not a corporate culture (because 99% of start-ups wear t-shirts and play ping-pong).   A "great" culture for one person is a terrible culture for another.  As a start-up, your goal is to create a company that appeals to under 5% of people -- but make it really appeal to them.  You don't need the other 95% of people to love it (they can even hate it) for you to be successful.  In fact, having some haters of your culture will likely make your company more successful. Oracle has a very distinct company culture.  Some people absolutely love it.  Some people absolutely hate it.  But Oracle has been one of the most successful and enduring tech companies.  Having a culture that drives strong positive (and even negative) emotions is a huge plus.

If you have a distributed workforce (where people work from home), than that is a defining part of your culture.  If you are a start-up where everyone has a private office, than that is part of your culture (because it is really, really rare). If you are a start-up in the Bay Area where people bike to work (or drive a Prius), has food sourced at Whole Foods, does yoga, has an open floor-plan, and has tequila Thursdays ... well then that's what most every other start-up has ... so your culture is about something else.  Those things are great -- but they don't define a culture in a start-up (though they might if you worked at a large bank).   Often getting the heart of culture is about how decisions get made.  Is decision-making centralized or decentralized?  Is it done through large in-person meetings or via chat?   Often culture is defined by the types of people you hire (and sometimes the hiring process).  If you have a rule "we only hire outside managers after exhausting all possible internal candidates," then that's likely part of your culture.   Culture is also clearly defined by rules (both written-down rules and the unwritten rules).  Culture is not all-good to all-people. If 99% of people in the country agree with company's culture statement, then it is not culture.  "We treat people with respect" and "we value the customer" are not core values for a company because presumably almost everyone aspires to treat people with respect and value the customer (though not everyone actually does it). Culture is also about what type of employee is most important.  In most start-ups, it is obvious who is most important.  It could be sales, engineering, product, marketing, etc. ... but usually one group is the privileged group.  Favoring one group is not necessarily better, it just shows the differences.   In the end, culture is about how your company is different from other companies, not how it is the same.

Mashalla full agree with great answer given by. Mohammed Ashraf 

By assessing overall job satisfaction of the employees, growth opportunities provided to the existing employees, Managements attitude towards employees &  how company promotes

employees to utilize their skills and provides them the exposure to the cutting edge technology in a progressive work environment

Following their ethics and to maintain our dignity

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