ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

ABSTRACT

One of the many responsibilities confronting leaders is the creation and maintenance of

organizational characteristics that reward and encourage collective efforts. The organizational

culture stands out as one of the components that are important to sustaining performance, and

competitive advantage, and a good reason for becoming a great company. The reason for ethical

failure in many organizations is the fact that while leaders concede of culture as a powerful tool

that can create and sustain performance, only few leaders give it the attention it deserves. The

cause of ethical failure in many organizations can be traced to organizational failure of

leadership active promotion of ethical ideals and practices. This paper will discuss the use of

Schein’s five primary mechanisms as a model for leaders in creating a culture that supports

moral and ethical behavior. Examine the implications of this model in gaining competitive

advantage, and will further critique the implications of an unethical culture within the

organization in terms of maintaining or expanding its market share.

Keywords: organizational characteristics, collective efforts, culture, sustaining performance,

ethics, Schein’s five primary mechanisms, organization culture, competitive advantage

Organization culture as driver, Page 2

The importance of culture in the organization

There has been growing concerns over the Ways many organizations have chosen to do

business in the recent past. The organization culture as a leadership concept has been identified

as one of the many components that leaders can use to grow a dynamic organization. Leadership

in organizations starts the culture formation process by imposing their assumptions and

expectations on their followers. Schein, (2004) states that As organizations stabilizes because of

success in accomplishing its primary tasks, the leader’s assumptions become shared and

embedding those assumptions can then be thought of more as a process of socializing new

members. Organizational leaders achieve success by being consistent, in sending clear signals

about their priorities, values and beliefs. Once culture is established and accepted, they become a

strong leadership tool to communicate the leader’s beliefs and values to organizational members,

and especially new comers. When leaders promote ethical culture, they become successful in

maintaining organizational growth, the good services demanded by the society, the ability to

address problems before they become disasters and consequently are competitive against rivals.

Schein, (1999) informs that corporate culture matters, because the decisions made without the

awareness of the operative culture forces may have unanticipated and undesirable consequences.

Organizational leaders are confronted with many complex issues, when making decisions about

the best methods to generate organizational achievements in their complex environments. The

leader’s success will depend to a large extent, on his knowledge and understanding of the

organizational culture. The leader who understands his organizational culture and takes it

seriously is capable of predicting the outcome of his decisions in preventing any anticipated

consequences. What then is organizational culture? The concept of organizational culture has

been defined from many perspectives in the literature. There is no one single definition for

organizational culture. The topic of organizational culture has been studied from many

perspectives and disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, organizational behavior, and

organizational leadership to name a few. Deal (1999) defines organizational culture as values,

beliefs, and behaviors that differentiate one organization from another. Schein, (1999) outlines

the manifestations of culture as “the way we do things around here”, “the rite and rituals of our

company”, “the company climate”, “the reward system”, “our basic values” (p.15), and so on.

These are manifestations of culture because they do not represent culture at the deeper levels

where we must understand and manage the deeper levels. In Schein, (2004) organizational

culture is defined as a “dynamic phenomenon that surrounds us at all times, being constantly

enacted and created by our interactions with others and shaped by leadership behavior, and a set

of structures, routines, rules, and norms that guide and constrain behavior” (p.1). A practical way

to define organizational culture is the environment in which we work; these are the member’s

behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, skills, perspectives, habits and prejudices. Some of these attributes

have been molded by past leaders, either good or bad through years of indoctrination, influence,

and reinforcement. The truth remains that leaders of organizations are responsible for the climate

they create in their organization.