Organizational culture is one of the fundamental pillars to support all those organizations that want to become competitive. For this reason, the central point around which this work revolves is the study of organizational culture as a competitive advantage in a social context of Venezuelan organizations.
In addition to studying organizational change as a cornerstone of continuous improvement of organizations, it was also considered relevant to study the importance of human resource management in the advancement of technology. This cause leads organizations to change their culture.
The theoretical framework was based on the existing theory on the subject developed with special relevance in Robbins (1992), and the contributions of Katz and Kahn (1995), with the explanation of the social processes of organizations, Lewin with the model of change in three steps, cited by Naím (1989), among others.
Articles from specialized magazines were also analyzed, such as ANRI, TOPICOS (Maraven), QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY, BUSINESS QUALITY, AFFAIRS (Cied), IESA, MANAGER, AVE (Management 95), in addition to the work of some research carried out in the country in higher education on organizational culture.
The methodology used in preparing the work was based on a Documentary Research, which was supported by the recommendations of the UPEL Manual. According to all the approaches indicated in the development of the topic and, where the following approach was considered relevant: senior management is responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their ability to understand complexity, clarify vision and improve mental models. shared, that is, they are responsible for learning. Today more than ever, organizations must develop learning capacities that allow them to capitalize on knowledge. This premise has recently become fundamental for the development of competitive advantages and the survival of the organization in a highly changing environment.These strategies must be taken into account by the organization in order to be able to evaluate and recognize the cultural values that are necessary for the organization and thus promote and reinforce them through an action plan, which allows the organization to not lose viability or validity. in their communication processes; considering communication as a key element for the change of culture and the creation and strengthening of the cultural values necessary to support the organizational strategy, and face a process of globalization and competitiveness.that the organization does not lose viability or validity in its communication processes; considering communication as a key element for the change of culture and the creation and strengthening of the cultural values necessary to support the organizational strategy, and face a process of globalization and competitiveness.that the organization does not lose viability or validity in its communication processes; considering communication as a key element for the change of culture and the creation and strengthening of the cultural values necessary to support the organizational strategy, and face a process of globalization and competitiveness.
Introduction
As the 21st century progresses, various economic and demographic trends are having a great impact on organizational culture. These new trends and dynamic changes make organizations and institutions, both public and private, debate in the urgent need to focus on technological advances. The events have ceased to have only local relevance and have come to refer to the world. Countries and regions collapse when the reference frameworks become obsolete and lose validity in the face of new realities.
From a more general perspective, globalization, economic openness, competitiveness are new phenomena that organizations have to face. To the extent that competitiveness is a fundamental element in the success of any organization, managers or leaders will make more efforts to achieve high levels of productivity and efficiency.
Organizations are the expression of a cultural reality, which are called to live in a world of permanent change, both socially and economically and technologically, or, on the contrary, like any organism, to enclose themselves within their limits. formal. In both cases, this cultural reality reflects a framework of values, beliefs, ideas, feelings and wills of an institutional community.
Certainly, the organizational culture serves as a frame of reference for the members of the organization and gives guidelines about how people should conduct themselves in it. In many occasions, the culture is so evident that you can see the behavior of the people the moment they cross the doors of the company.
From a general point of view, it could be said that organizations committed to success are open to constant learning. This implies generating conditions to maintain continuous learning and frame them as the fundamental asset of the organization.
Today it is necessary for organizations to design more flexible structures for change and for this change to occur as a consequence of the learning of its members. This implies generating conditions to promote high-performance teams, understanding that team learning implies generating value to work and more adaptability to change with a broad vision towards innovation.
Although it is true that there have been many transformation efforts that have failed in both public and private institutions, it is no less true that the lack of planning and leadership in these organizations has led to the deterioration in their functions. Guédez (1997) It maintains, among other things, an urgent concern: how to exercise a managerial commitment that really encourages change and creativity? One could speak of two complementary spheres of action. The first is associated with the exercise of a style where, in addition to managing work, the brain and heart are also managed.
For its part, the second is related to the establishment of favorable organizational conditions.
Through the processes of organizational transformation, some managers have avoided conjunctural aspects such as organizational culture, the role of the leader within a process of change has been very superficially interpreted, the important and strategic fact that: if there is no a shared vision, sufficient energy and meaning will never be generated to mobilize the organization and its human resources in the process of change.
The central aspect of organizations with a view to success is the quality of their leaders with full freedom in the sense of their emancipation, possessing a high level of capabilities, which allows them to manage change with a proactive vision.
Cordeiro (1996) argues that the emphasis on costs, customers, chaos and competitiveness, are factors on which human asset management is guiding its decisions and actions globally and strategically, in such a way to add value systematically and Continues to the processes of the organization.
The new management schemes are a reflection of the way the organization thinks and operates, demanding among other aspects: a worker with the knowledge to develop and achieve business objectives; a flexible process before the changes introduced by the organization; a flat, agile structure, reduced to the minimum expression that creates a work environment that satisfies those who participate in the execution of organizational objectives; a reward system based on the effectiveness of the process where success and risk are shared; and a participative work team in the actions of the organization.
Certainly, Venezuelan organizations do not escape this reality of change, with the adoption of new technologies (Quality of management, Reengineering of processes, Benchmarking, Outsourcing, etc.) have seen excellent results. Such is the case of the oil industry that competes in international markets.
There is much that must continue to be learned, maintaining a constant search for best practices to be the best. This work is based on a Documentary Investigation, the analysis of problems with the purpose of expanding knowledge, based on the contributions of the different bibliographic and documentary sources, revised for its development. Within this approach, it was considered important to raise the most relevant aspects of the content of the work, which consists of three chapters; the first is oriented to develop the organizational culture, starting from the importance of each of the factors related to the Venezuelan company, the second focuses on culture within a process of organizational change, and the third relates the organizational culture with human resources management,as a competitive strategy.
Organizational culture
The purpose of this chapter is to base the investigation with the bibliographic review, referring to the subject under study, including the Importance of organizational culture, analysis of the factors of culture, vision and values., From the different approaches treated for the development of the job.
Organizations have a purpose, survival objectives; they go through life cycles and face growth problems. They have a personality, a need, a character and they are considered as micro societies that have their socialization processes, their norms and their own history. This is all related to culture.
In this regard Robbins (1991) states:
The idea of conceiving organizations as cultures (in which there is a system of common meanings among their members) constitutes a fairly recent phenomenon. Ten years ago, organizations were generally considered simply as a rational means which was used to coordinate and control a group of people.
They had vertical levels, departments, authority relationships, etc. But organizations are more than that, like individuals; They may be rigid or flexible, unfriendly or helpful, innovative and conservative…, but they both have a special atmosphere and character that go beyond simple structural features…. Organizational theorists have started, in recent years, to recognize this by admitting the important role that culture plays in the members of an organization (p, 439).
Organizational Culture Conceptualization
The concept of culture is new in terms of its application to business management. It is a new perspective that allows management to understand and improve organizations. The concepts that will be presented below have achieved great importance, because they obey a need to understand what happens in an environment and explain why some activities carried out in organizations fail and others do not.
When reviewing everything related to culture, it was found that most of the authors cited in the development of the work coincide, when they relate the organizational culture, both to the social sciences and to the behavioral sciences. In this regard Davis (1993) says that "culture is the conventional conduct of a society, and influences all its actions despite the fact that this reality rarely penetrates their conscious thoughts." The author considers that people easily assume their culture, in addition, that it gives them security and a position in any environment where they are.
On the other hand, it was found that the definitions of culture are identified with the dynamic systems of the organization, since the values can be modified, as an effect of the continuous learning of the individuals; In addition, they give importance to the processes of raising awareness as a specific part of the organizational culture.
Delgado (1990) argues that "Culture is like the configuration of learned behavior, the elements of which are shared and transmitted by members of a community" (page 1).
In the same line of the author cited previously Schein (1988) refers to the set of values, needs, expectations, beliefs, policies and norms accepted and practiced by them. It distinguishes various levels of culture, a) basic assumptions; b) values or ideologies; c) artifacts (slang, stories, rituals and decoration) d; practices. Artifacts and practices express managerial values and ideologies.
Through the set of beliefs and values shared by the members of the organization, the culture exists at a high level of abstraction and is characterized by the fact that they condition the behavior of the organization, making rational many attitudes that unite people, conditioning their way of think, feel and act.
Charles Handy quoted by González and Bellino (1995), raises four types of organizational cultures:
Depending on the emphasis it gives to some of the following elements: power, role, tasks and people. Based on this, it expresses that the culture of power is characterized by being directed and controlled from a center of power exercised by key people within organizations. The role-based culture is usually identified with the bureaucracy and is supported by a clear and detailed description of the responsibilities of each position within the organization. The culture by tasks is fundamentally supported in the work projects carried out by the organization and is oriented towards obtaining specific results at specific times. Finally, the people-centered culture, as its name implies, is based on the individuals who make up the organization (p, 38).
From a more general point of view, culture is based on the values, beliefs and principles that constitute the foundations of an organization's management system, as well as the set of management procedures and behaviors that serve as examples and reinforce those principles. basic.
Pümpin and García, cited by Vergara (1989) define culture as «… the set of
norms, values and ways of thinking that characterize the behavior of personnel at all levels of the company, as well as in the presentation of the image »(p, 26).
The previous approach refers to the way culture lives in the organization. It also shows that culture works as a system or process. That is why culture not only includes values, attitudes and behavior, but also, the consequences directed towards that activity, such as vision, strategies and actions, which together work as a dynamic system.
Importance of Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is the core of the organization that is present in all the functions and actions carried out by all its members. To this end, Monsalve (1989) considers that culture is born in society, is administered through the resources that society provides, and represents an active factor that fosters the development of that society.
Other authors add more characteristics to culture, such is the case of Katz and Kahn (1995) when they argue that research on organizational culture has been based on qualitative methods, in that; It is difficult to evaluate culture objectively because it is based on the shared assumptions of the subjects and is expressed through the language, norms, stories and traditions of its leaders.
Culture determines the way a company works, it is reflected in strategies, structures and systems. It is the invisible source where the vision acquire its action guide. The success of transformation projects depends on the talent and ability of management to change the culture of the organization according to the demands of the environment. In this regard, Deal and Kennedy (1985)) see organizational culture as "the conventional conduct of a society that shares a series of particular values and beliefs and these in turn influence all its actions." Therefore, the culture to be learned, evolves with new experiences, and can be changed if the dynamics of the learning process is understood.
Within the conceptual framework, the organizational culture has the particularity of manifesting itself through significant behaviors of the members of an organization, which facilitate behavior in it and, basically, are identified through a set of managerial and supervisory practices, such as elements of organizational dynamics. In this regard, Guerin (1992) maintains that it is important to know the type of culture of an organization, because values and norms are going to influence the behavior of individuals.
In the different approaches to organizational culture, it has been observed that there are authors interested in seeing culture as an overview to understand the behavior of organizations, others have been inclined to gain a deep understanding of leadership, roles, and the power of managers. as transmitters of the culture of organizations.
With respect to the above, Kurt Lewin's approach (quoted by Newstrom, 1991) is interesting when he maintains that individual behavior depends on the interaction between personal characteristics and the environment that surrounds him. Part of that environment is social culture, which provides extensive clues to how a person would behave in a given environment.
On the other hand, the originality of a person is expressed through behavior and the individuality of organizations can be expressed in terms of culture. There are practices within the organization that reflect that culture is learned and, therefore, cultures must be created in the spirit of continuous learning. In this regard, Siliceo (1995) maintains that continuous training for the organizational group is a fundamental element to support any program aimed at creating and strengthening the sense of commitment of the staff, changing attitudes and building a common language that facilitates communication, understanding and integration of people.
By cultivating a culture in the organization supported by its values, it is intended that all members develop an identification with the strategic purposes of the organization and display behaviors aimed at being self-controlled (Schein, 1985). In other words, a culture is the particular way of doing things in a specific environment.
Characteristics of Culture
Regarding the characteristics of the culture, Davis (1993) states that organizations, like fingerprints, are always unique. She points out that they have their own history, behavior, communication process, interpersonal relationships, reward system, decision making, philosophy and myths that, in their entirety, constitute culture.
Both in its general dimensions and in its more specific horizons, culture embodies a social and historical manifestation. Furthermore, culture is expressed in a certain space and in a certain place from which it receives influences (Guédez, 1996).
"The culture determines what the people involved in it consider correct or incorrect, as well as their preferences in the way they are directed" (Davis, 1990).
The difference between the different organizational philosophies makes the culture considered unique and exclusive for each company and allows a high degree of cohesion among its members, as long as it is shared by the majority.
The aforementioned approaches are maintained, because from its roots every organization builds its own personality and its own language. Which are represented by the modeling (tactics or strategies) of each of its members.
In this regard, Guiot (1992) considers that the organizational culture:
It allows the individual to correctly interpret the demands and understand the interaction of different individuals and the organization. Give an idea of what is expected. It offers a complete representation of the rules of the game without which no power, status or material rewards can be obtained.
In the opposite direction, it allows the organization to learn. It is only thanks to its culture that the organization can be more than the sum of its members. Organizational culture plays the role of a collective memory in which computer capital is stored. This memory gives meaning to the experience of the participants and guides the efforts and strategies of the organization.
It is through the organizational culture that the individual's commitment to the organization is illuminated and rationalized. Organizations are continually created with what their members perceive of the world and with what happens within the organization (pp. 181-182).
The previous analysis considers culture as a strategic priority, due to its particularly slow evolution over time and its crucial impact on the success or failure of organizational strategies.
By virtue of what has been stated on the subject, it can be affirmed that culture is the reflection of deep personality factors, such as values and attitudes that evolve very slowly and are often unconscious. Consequently, organizational culture is understood as the set of widely shared beliefs and practices in the organization and, therefore, has a direct influence on the decision process and on the behavior of the organization.
Ultimately, they even offer ideas, guidelines or, at a minimum, interpretations of ideas concerning what the organization's actual performance is, and should be.
For Robbins (1991):
Culture fulfills several functions within an organization. First, it fulfills the function of defining the limits; that is, the behaviors differ from each other. Second, it conveys a sense of identity to its members. Third, it facilitates the creation of a personal commitment to something broader than the individual's selfish interests. Fourth, it increases the stability of the social system. Culture is the social bond that helps hold the organization together by providing appropriate standards of what employees must do and say… (p. 444).
Based on the previous approach, you can go down to a more specific approach to the subject. In other words, mentioning the effects of cultural phenomena on business effectiveness and the situation of the individual. In this regard, Schein (1985) points out: «The effects of poor knowledge of culture are sadly obvious in the international arena. Poor knowledge of culture can be the cause of wars and the collapse of societies, as when the presence of solid subcultures causes the main culture to lose its centralizing and integrating capacity "(p. 47).
These approaches focus organizational culture as an important variable that is interrelated with organizational behavior and is conceived as the configuration of learned behavior and the results of said behavior, whose elements are shared and transmitted to members of a society, on the other On the other hand, it allows the micromotives of the actors (needs, beliefs, values, rules, symbols), among others, to form an organizational macro-behavior.
Analyzing the above, it can be considered that the organizational culture contains aspects that are interrelated, it could be understood that it is a reflection of the dynamic balance and the harmonic relationships of the entire set of subsystems, this means that in an organization there may be sub- cultures within the same culture.
In this regard Robbins (1991) affirms that «the sub-cultures are typical of large organizations, which reflect problems and situations or common experiences of the members. These focus on the different departments or the different decentralized areas of the organization ».
Any area or dependency of the organization can adopt a sub-culture shared exclusively by its members, these, in turn, will assume the values of the central culture along with others that are characteristic of the workers who work in said dependencies.
The subculture provides a frame of reference in which the members of the organization interpret activities and events, difficult to pin down as they are individual behaviors.
Consequently, although it is true that the culture of an organization is the reflection of the dynamic equilibrium that occurs between the aforementioned subsystems, it is no less true that the development and scope of this dynamic must be understood. What allows to see more easily the behavior of the organizational processes.
Guédez (1995) raises two important aspects that are:
the philosophical and attitudinal subsystems, that is, that the philosophical subsystem is linked to the mission, vision and values of an organization, since these aspects are the explicit and direct responsibility of senior management.
In effect, they are the managers who must assume the role of facilitators to outline and specify the mission, vision and values. Another subsystem, is the attitudinal, maintains a lot of dependency on the philosophical subsystem, includes everything related to behaviors, feelings, relationships and communications, sense of work and responsibilities, participatory inclination, loyalty and affective involvement; This represents the main source of the organizational climate (p. 59).
On the other hand, the management with a clear knowledge of the mission and the vision of the company encourage the participation of the organizational group in achieving the objectives.
The mission can be seen as the level of perception that a personality has about the satisfactory answers given to it about the main, ethical and transcendent objective of the existence of the Denison organization (1991). In other words, it is equivalent to the answer of why the organization exists.
The author quoted above considers that mission is the raison d'être of any organization, but no less, that mission provides meaning and purpose, defining a social function and external goals for an institution and defining individual functions with respect to the organizational function.
The sense of mission requires organizations to project themselves into the future. This way of thinking has an impact on behavior and allows an organization to shape its current behavior considering a desired future state.
Talking about the future of an organization, is talking about the vision of it, it can be seen from the future needs or requirements of the organization, which can be used to promote a shared perception of the need for change and a description of the desired future organization.
Senge's (1990) approach to shared visions is based on encouraging members of the organization to develop and share their own personal visions, and states that a vision is not actually shared until it is related to the visions of individuals across the organization.
A successful vision is generally made up of groups of individuals committed to the organization and who are willing to provide their full potential to achieve the proposed objectives (Jackson, 1992). In other words, corporate cultures arise from personal visions and is rooted in the set of values, interests and aspirations of an individual.
One of the biggest challenges management will have to face is translating the vision into supporting actions and activities. It is important to identify and delineate how this step will be carried out from theory to practice or from vision to action, which implies a balance between improving the current and future environment.
Organizational values
Values represent the basis of evaluation that members of an organization use to judge situations, acts, objects and people. These reflect the real goals as well as the beliefs and basic concepts of an organization and, as such, form the core of the organizational culture (Denison, 1991).
Values are the foundation of any organizational culture, define success in concrete terms for employees, and set standards for organization (Deal and Kennedy, 1985). At the core of the company's philosophy for success, the values provide a common sense of direction for all employees and set guidelines for their daily commitment.
The values inspire the raison d'être of each Institution, the norms come to be the instruction manuals for the behavior of the company and of the people Robbins (1991).
Therefore, any organization with aspirations of excellence should have understood and systematized the values and ideas that constitute the driving behavior of the company.
Consequently, the approaches described above lead us to think that the values are explicit in the will of the founders of the companies, in the articles of incorporation and in the formalization of the mission and vision of the organizations.
The constitutive trait of value is not only belief or conviction, but also its translation into patterns of behavior that the organization has the right to demand of its members. Values are generated from the culture of the organization, therefore, they are agreed by senior management. They are also required and are taken into account for the evaluation and development of the personnel that make up the organization.
Importance of values
The importance of value lies in the fact that it becomes a motivating element of human actions and behavior, defines the fundamental and definitive nature of the organization, creates a sense of identity of the staff with the organization (Denison, 1991).
Therefore, values are formulated, taught and assumed within a concrete reality and not as absolute entities in a social context, representing an option with ideological bases with social and cultural bases.
The values must be clear, equal, shared and accepted by all members and levels of the organization, so that there is a unified criterion that compacts and strengthens the interests of all members with the organization (Robbins, 1991).
Values system
Based on the different definitions of organizational values raised by the scholars cited in the research, what Monsalve (1989) pointed out when approaching this process from the following perspectives can be considered relevant: learning value through thinking, reflecting, reasoning and to understand, to teach the value through its description, explanation, exemplification and transmission and to act the value to turn it into a habit, understood this, as the integration of knowledge.
Although the values are abstract, their organizational utility is based on their ability to generate and direct specific behaviors or the feasibility of their conversion into guidelines, guidelines and criteria for actions and behaviors, which determines that they are always formulated, taught and assumed within of a concrete reality of performance, becoming attributes of dignity or perfection that each element of the real or of what is done in the position or function must have.
Shared values
In terms of values, it is important to communicate to all members of the organization exactly what the company's value system is, especially in periods of change. Furthermore, bringing about change in the culture of the organization, another important mechanism is managerial training that is explicitly oriented to modify behavior in support of new corporate values (Jackson, 1992).
The internalization of organizational values implies that the individual identifies with the company and it is a commitment of the management to keep the organizational collective informed of daily activities, which the organization proposes as beneficial, correct or desirable.
When a value is proactive, conditions are created that allow choosing, choosing or selecting the values that the organization offers and proposes. This, in turn, invites to share a feeling of belonging to each of its members and influences their behavioral manifestations.
The values represent guidelines or reference for the production of the desired behavior, make up the decision-making of the organization, while the pro-activation on the other hand, shapes the real capacity of execution of those results through the concrete actions of the members of the organization (Monsalve, 1989).
Based on the aforementioned, it can be discerned that to develop a true organizational culture, it is necessary for senior management to develop a global philosophy that guides the actions of each member of the organization.
People's actions are always based in part on the basic considerations they make. In this regard, Der Erve (1990) considers that it is important for senior management to develop their own philosophy, which includes their previous experiences, their education and background, as well as their basic considerations about people and the need to win the commitment of subordinates. based on the values of the organization.
By studying each of the organizational culture approaches, it has been observed that the aforementioned authors have emphasized the behavior of organizations and the permanent and vertiginous changes in the competitive conditions to which organizations are subject.
Therefore, successful organizations will be those that are capable of recognizing and developing their own values based on their ability to create value through the creation of knowledge and its expression.
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