Organizational Culture Theory

Robbins and Judge (2013) defined an organization as “a subconsciously coordinated social unit, composed of two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals” (p. 39). Jones (2010) further add that an organization as a “response to and a means of satisfying some human need” (p.24).

In his book, Organizational Theory, Design and Change, Jones (2010) stated that every organization will go through predictable sequences of growth and change known as the organizational life cycle. It has four principal stages which are birth, growth, decline, and death. Every organization’s survival rate in the environment in which it is operating will depend on how it respond to problems it encounter. An

The reason for this is because when people started to live together and formed a group or society, they started to develop a culture by assigning meaning to various of things, including ideas, behaviour, objects (Tharp, Defining "Culture" and "Organizational Culture": From Anthropology to the Office, 2009) and establishing a “pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, Cultures and Organizations Third Edition, 2010). Culture, therefore, is a human-made system in which every member of a group or society conforms to in the way they live or how they

Tharp (2009) further argues that “culture involves three basic human activities: what people think, what people do, and what people make” (p.1).

Schein (McGuire, 2003), using the iceberg metaphor, explain the tree levels of culture. At the top, or the tip of an iceberg, is the artifacts, which is the most visible, and therefore, observable element of a culture. Underneath the tip are the more invisible element of culture: espoused belief and values, embedded in the consciousness of the society, and the basic underlying assumptions, which are taken for granted value by the society. The figure below will give a visualization that can give an idea of how the different element of culture can be observed.

They way people think, do and make, however, are mutable and changes over time. Therefore, in order to survive, members of an organization adapt themselves, learn a new form of culture, let go of the past form of culture that is no longer conform to the environment, applied it in the society and pass down the new form of culture to the new generation of its