How Does Leadership Influence Organizational Culture

Leadership’s influence on Organizational Culture: A Rupert Murdoch mess When you read about the scandal involving Rupert Murdoch, phone hacking, and his media empire including News Of The World and News Corporation, it’s hard not to wonder, “What the heck were they thinking?” The point is that the thought processes behind these acts were ingrained in the culture of the organisation and the way the employees were being led. Keith Rupert Murdoch, global media magnate, billionaire businessman and a ruthless competitor took a small Australian daily at the age of 21 to a massive multinational company raking in upwards of $30 billion in revenues and employing 50,000 people. Throughout the last 62 years, the unsaid professed the rule has been of “winning at all costs”. Yes, he has been successful, but at what cost? The innumerable scandals that culminated with the phone hacking one that broke out in 2011

Can we truly believe that just one or two bad apples cause these scandals? The environment is such that performance is rewarded, such behavior leads to rewards and everybody around them gets away with it, so why not do it too? Their managers may not direct them to behave unethically but certainly created the culture to behave so. Can Rupert Murdoch and his senior management get away with the excuse of “being in the dark”? I agree that they can’t be responsible for everything that happens in an organisation, but they must certainly shoulder some of the blame for creating conditions for the actions. And to extend this point further, can such organizations with toxic cultures ever be corrected? It’s a debate worth undertaking if simply changing the top management can arrest this corrosion and drive change on something as deep rooted as culture. Could Rupert Murdoch and senior management have saved ‘News Of The World’ by stepping aside and initiating a wave of change from the