Culture Change

Clearly the organisational culture will have a profound influence on the quality and productivity of its employee and hence of the organisation. Thus, the management of organisational culture is very important. Managing it well may entail sustaining the present culture as well as inducing a change to better state. The undesirable aspects of it can be changed and improved upon. The existing culture may have been appropriate for a certain time and set of conditions or may have deteriorated over a period of time. It must 

be improved upon and changed to keep pace with time, particularly in the changed scenario of globalisation of market, liberalization of economy with corresponding changes in government regulations, and economic shifts, exponential growth in knowledge and technologies etc. The unleashing of these rapidly changing and dynamic forces may well leave an organisation with an outdated culture which may even hinder its effectiveness and growth. The management will have to alter these factors that created and sustained the current culture and replace them with the new set of values and ethos which are in harmony with the changing environment. 

The fact that organisational culture is made up of relatively stable characteristics, evolved over a period of time, would imply that cultural changes are difficult to achieve. Strong cultures are particularly resistant to changes. For employees, to unlearn years of experiences and memoirs is a stupendous task. 

Hence, while it is theoretically possible to change the cultures, the time frame necessary to unlearn a given set of values and replace them with a new set, may be fairly long; too long in the present volatile environment to be effective.