One key job of a leader is to promote collective effort in the organization; the leader should ensure there is an organizational culture in a company. This will have an impact on the building, influencing, and changing people’s attitudes. The collective effort in any company, is an essential tool for business or organizational growth and in due effect, it will help to cope with the environment and its target will be towards the achievement of the organization’s goal, this is what we call an organizational culture. “It can be defined as a common understanding upon which an action is organized” (Pfeffer 1997, p.34). Such cultural forms could be rites, ceremonials, rituals, myths, saga, legends, stories, folktales, symbols, language, and even gesture.
“Competing Value Frame work is an organizational culture framework designed by Cameron and Quinn in 1991” (Holbech 2003,p.56). “It refers to whether an organization has a predominant internal or exterior focus and whether it supports plasticity and individuality aimed at stability and control based on four culture types’ dimensions: Clan, adhocracy, Market and hierarchy” (Wagner and Spencer 1996,p.24). KPMG has a clan where the organization concentrates on internal maintenance with plasticity, concern for the people, and feeling to its clients who are the priority for its key business. It has a hierarchy that focuses on its inside maintenance with the exceptional need for stability and control of the organization. Finally, it has the market on which the organization has focused on external maintenance with this special necessity to stability and control to enhance the confidence of its clients. This has influenced the business at KPMG Company and has moved it to international recognition as a leading company when it comes to implementing its services in the world.
The organization culture profile (OCP) developed by O’Reilly, Chatman, and Caldwell is used as a measure of culture and values as one facet of culture at the level of the organization. “It shows the correspondence between individuals and organizational values while it can also be used to evaluate persons’ organizational fit when evaluating and hiring applicants for jobs“(Pierre et al 2006, p.45). The OCP consist of 54 values statements that establish eight dimensions of organization culture, this includes; attention to new information, innovation of new ideas, keenness to detail, orientation, outcome, aggressiveness in finding solutions, supportiveness to the clients, emphasis on rewards, teamwork orientation, and decisiveness in problem-solving.
This can be carried out by use of the Q-sort method of data collection to get information when carrying out an analysis on the organizational culture profile. This is quite coherent with KPMG Company and they take into consideration these factors and that is why they have quite a very rigorous system of recruiting graduate trainees and they go for very bright students and those that possess outstanding performance. KPMG possesses a culture that is unique in that everybody within the company does not refer to the other as “sir”, which is common in many other organizations. Each staff calls the other by the first name, which is what they uphold. Each newly recruited staff is taught to understand their values and modicum of behavior from the first day they are introduced and eventually they learn to behave and perform everything as a ritual, becoming part and parcel of them. They also have unique characteristics that make them stand out and hence they have their OCP quite entrenched in them in their day-to-day lives and approach to life.
“Human synergistic circumplex is a quantitative human social measure for behaviors” (Pierre, Balthazar, Robert and Cooke 2001, p.12), and the impact of constructive against the defensive fulfillment. This puts together twelve styles of human thinking and behavior and is narrowed down to three general orientations; constructive (red) styles, passive or defensive (green) styles, and aggressive (red) styles. Most often, the integrated diagnostic system can also be included. An organizational culture record is one of the mainly used and validated instruments used to measure the human synergistic circumplex systems and this determines the organizational culture in terms of behavioral norms and anticipated expectations.
KPMG is a company of choice to many including me and it carries around inspiring ideas and information that do have a potential impact on the world at large. You not only want to belong there but one will always like to be associated with the company because of the organizational cultural values their staff portray and inculcates even to their clients. This has seen KPMG grow over competing companies such as Delloitte and even The Ernst and Young Company with an international cliental base. The culture streamlines the company’s objectives, goals, missions, and vision that blend well with the public creating a stream of clients being attracted to the Company. This is a factor that depends on the leadership of the company and hence a very vital tool in choosing who to lead the company.
Reference List
Holbech L. (2003). The high-performance organizations: Creating dynamic stability and sustainable success. New York: Butterworth –Heinemann.
Pierre, A. Balthazar, Robert A. Cooke D. (2001). Organizational Culture, a Knowledge Management Success: Assessing the Behavior Performance Continuum. Journal of Hicss. Vol 8: 5.
Pierre et al. (2006). Dysfunctional culture, and Organization: Capturing the behavioral norms that form organizational culture and drive performance. The Journal of Management Psychology. Vol 21: 8.
Pfeffer J. (1997). New directions for organization theory: problems and prospects. London: Oxford University Press.
Wagner B. Spencer L. (1996). The role of surveys in transforming culture. Data, knowledge, and action. San Francisco: Jossey -Bass.