Organizational and Computer Culture

AuthorDana Ramona Andrişescu
PositionFaculty of Economics and Business Administration, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iaşi, Romania.
Pages538-545

Page 538

Introduction

Employees face new technological changes in the workplace every day. Some employees embrace the changes that technology brings, while others resist and become defensive. If they finally embrace it, as they have to adapt to the new requirements of the job and society, they try to use it for their own benefits bringing in some cases disasters to the organization they work for. The new technologies allowed criminals to change the environment in which they are doing the illegal activities. Now, they can surf the Internet for victims, connect to private networks, and cover their tracks. Only the skilled network administrators can figure out what is happening and supported by the managers can use and take the appropriate measures.

In order for an organization to survive and face all the challenges including those with employees, it has to have its own culture and rules to be respected. We can say that the first suspects when something wrong has happened are the employees as they have access to all the organization’s information and technology. The explosion of the Internet and its use in whether for private or public use, has affected productivity positively and negatively. On one hand, organizations have harnessed the Internet to perform tasks such as analysis and research and have shortened cycle times, marketed products and reduced costs associated with doing business1. Consequently, companies have started to rethink how much Internet access to allow employees in the workplace. Broadband access to the Internet in the workplace increased the number of web pages viewed by individuals and the amount of time spent online. Using Internet for business allows the employees to access outside information and software and that is why they are tempted to do something wrong like stealing and selling organization’s information by impersonating somebody else, steal money by altering data, bring damages to both hardware and software and so on. Organizations have to prevent these types of illegal activities by training their employees and facing them with the consequences of their actions.

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Therefore we will see in this paper why it is important to have an organizational culture and how should managers deal with unethical employees. We have used management’s and computer science’s literature in order to present the problems that organizations are dealing with.

From organizational culture to computer culture

In order to have positive results, each organization should have a culture as we could say it is a little society with its own people, rules, principles, and actions. Laudon and Laudon2 say that the key elements of an organization are its people, structure, business processes, politics, and culture. We are going to focus on organizational and computer culture and people’s reactions towards them.

If we search the Internet and look into literature we will see that a formal definition is very used, that of culture, which is a set of learned core values, beliefs, standards, knowledge, morals, laws and behaviors shared by individuals and societies that determines how an individual or a group acts, feels and views himself and others. A society’s culture is passed from generation to generation and aspects such as language, religion, customs and laws are interrelated. With computers, it should go the same; people should learn from each other how to use technology in the best way possible.

Culture is made up of the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by a group of people3. It is the behavior that results when a group arrives at a set of - generally unspoken and unwritten - rules for working together. Culture is difficult to define, but you generally know when you have found an employee who appears to fit your culture. He just “feels” right to do the job. A big mistake considering that appearances can be deceiving and that the trustworthy employee becomes the greatest enemy.

From what we can see, culture has two forms:

- Unspoken and unwritten. It is transmitted from person to person, based on employees’ actions, behavior, results, and values.

- Spoken and written. It is the official one, used by managers to control their staff. It is written in contracts, in different papers and is transmitted to everybody.

The first type of culture is known by everybody, as news travel very fast. Perhaps the most used example is that employee X did something that was right or wrong, won or lost something, what is to be done for clients, suppliers, and partners. These actions cannot be found in organization’s official papers but in employees’ behavior. The official culture is that written and should be respected by everybody for positives outcomes.

There might be some problems in building a culture inside an organization. First of all, it is somehow difficult to have an organizational culture especially if it is a multinational one, where employees come from different countries and have their own values, standards, principles, and ethics. Secondly, will that culture be adopted by everybody, when employees come and go, especially if they are young or just in a probation period? It is difficult but not impossible. Managers should bring to mind to the new employees what they want from them, what their attributions are and how they should behave in order to have a good collaboration.

According to Kathryn Baker4 organizational culture literature makes it clear that:

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- culture is essential for both successful organizational change and maximizing the value of human capital;

- culture management should become a critical management competency;

- while the right culture may be a necessary condition for organizational success, it is by no means a sufficient condition. An important challenge for managers is to determine what the most effective culture is for their organization and, when necessary, how to change the organizational culture effectively.

Culture is the environment that surrounds everyone at work all of the time. It is a powerful element that shapes work enjoyment, relationships, and processes. But, culture is something that we cannot actually see, except through its physical manifestations in our workplace as organizational or corporate culture is the system of shared actions, values, and beliefs that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members.

Edgar Schein5 suggests that...

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