Organizational Culture Analysis

Research and find any free organizational culture quiz. Some free quiz sites are provided below, but feel free to search and use your own quiz.

1. https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/quiz-whats-your-organizational-culture

Take the quiz and then copy/paste your results into a Word document and answer the following questions:

1. Add two to four paragraphs about your learning experience impacted by the organizational culture quiz. Please specifically discuss/assess what you see as an ideal culture or a culture that is ideal for rapid change.
2. In two to three paragraphs, discuss how Continuous Improvement is impacting healthcare, banking, retail and/or government (choose one area). Merger of Lean and Six Sigma are interesting topics you can explore here.

Answer

Title of the Paper

Introduction

Social organizations tend to have an inward focus and are highly collaborative. The work atmosphere is often relaxed and casual, and the line may be blurred between professional relationships and friendships. Workers are often given a lot of flexibility and freedom to do things their own way and to make their own choices. Employees in these environments can often say that they have a great friend at work and that there are people there who care about them personally.

The bonds of trust are strong as is the sense of team that encourages collaboration and flexibility. One attitudinal characteristic often found in Social cultures is very little ego about titles and roles within the company. Leaders in a Social culture consider themselves to be part of the team and are typically friendly and affiliative.

Learning Experience

Organizations with a high social culture are collaborative and flexible. These attributes help them to maximize employee capabilities and knowledge. Information and ideas among employees spread more easily because they cooperate and communicate across hierarchical and departmental lines. This can have an overall positive impact on the performance of the organization (Weare, 2014). Social organizations are characterized by employees who are aware that they are working together to achieve a common goal.

Social organizations have strong but flexible leadership. The leaders are role models who set the tone for employees to emulate. This is in terms of performance and behavior. Leaders communicate with the employees about the organization’s expectations. They are active in coaching individuals to better at working as a team. Leaders model flexible and collaborative behavior using themselves as an example. There are strong internal networks. The leaders are thoroughly engaged in working with individuals in different departments and in different roles. They also reward team members with collaborative behavior when necessary. Mistakes are seen as learning opportunities for employees rather than acts to be scolded over (Weare, 2014). Decisions are taken to be a hypothesis without prior judgment. Employees learn from new information. This aspect encourages innovation and creativity.

Organizations with a social culture are social in nature because of effective and regular communication. Flexibility and collaboration cannot be achieved without good communication between employees and their teams. Frequent communication enables learning therefore achieving progress in projects. Communication allows for enhanced sharing of ideas and information with the team. There is little risk of confusion about what is expected of the employees and what they are supposed to deliver. Social organizations are characterized by intense listening and questioning (Weare, 2014). There are many forums for open discussion and the generation of ideas.

Social organizations encourage the use of shared resources including information and ideas. Leaders and talented members of the team share their experience with other employees. All team members stand to gain from the experience of others. This is essential in building social capital. There is an understanding among everyone that talent is not to be wasted.

Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is a systemic and sustainable approach that uses data to improve the quality of a product or service. In healthcare, continuous improvement is aimed at enhancing the healthcare quality and outcomes for patients (Kaplan, 2015). As the name suggests, continuous improvement is not a one-off event but a process that requires commitment, persistence, and investment.

Continuous improvement has enhanced collaboration and communication among healthcare professionals. They regard these two aspects as important in their work more when continuous improvement is implemented successfully. The implementation of new initiatives is easier there is frequent communication between leaders and those mandated to implement them. Audit and feedback are also treated as important facilitators of delivering quality health care. Team structures are stronger where continuous improvement is implemented.

Lean Six Sigma puts an emphasis on lean tools to identify and get rid of waste. The focus is to define, measure, analyze, then control and improve. The benefits of the Lean Six Sigma approach include cost-cutting, time-saving, less waste, and a better understanding of the patient’s needs (Kaplan, 2015). This ultimately improves the quality of health care given to the patient. Efforts towards continuous improvement include balancing supply and demand, placing the needs of the patient first, defining focus, creating effective data analysis tools, and incorporating evolving technologies. These efforts create a culture of excellent service and leadership that is aimed at stewarding change. Continuous improvement also enhances transparency and accountability.

Conclusion

One defining character of health care today is continuous process improvement. Ii is rapidly speeding up the increase in data to help in the delivery of care and system management. The effective management and flow of information are treated as a priority that calls for the commitment of the organization.

Among the different forms of organization culture, social, flexible, and collaborative is appealing to many employees. As long as the leadership is successful in building a unanimous focus on a common goal, social organization is likely to achieve better performance and innovation levels helpful in meeting the organization’s objectives. Introduce the topic of discussion using a thesis statement (e.g., The objective of this project is to…). Explain the scope and nature of the topic.

References

Kaplan, G. (2015). Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access. The National Academies Press. https://www.nap.edu/catalog/20220/transforming-health-care-scheduling-and-access-getting-to-now

Murphy, M. (2019). Quiz: What’s your organizational culture? https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/quiz-whats-your-organizational-culture

Weare, C. (2014). Collaboration and culture: Organizational culture and the dynamics of collaborative policy networks. Policy Studies Journal. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/psj.12077