PRIMARY CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

There are 7 primary characteristics of organizational culture. They are listed below.

1. Innovation and Risk Taking:
Risk and returns go hand in hand. Places where you take a risk (calculated risk of course!), the chances of returns are higher. Same goes for innovation. You could either be a follower or a pioneer. Pioneering has its share of risks, but at times it can also have a breakthrough outcome for the organization. Thus, innovation and risk taking is one of the main characteristics of organizational culture defining how much room the business allows for innovation.

2. Attention to Detail:
Attention to detail defines how much importance a company allots to precision and detail in the workplace. This is also a universal value as the degree of attention the employees are expected to give is crucial to the success of any business. The management defines the degree of attention to be given to details.

3. Outcome Orientation: Some organizations pay more attention to results rather than processes. It is really the business model of each business that defines whether the focus should be on the outcome or the processes. This defines the outcome orientation of the business.

4. People Orientation:
This is still one of the most contentious issues in organizational culture today. How much should be the management focus on the people? Some organizations are famous for being employee oriented as they focus more on creating a better work environment for its 'associates' to work in. Others still are feudal in nature, treating employees no better than work-machines.

5. Team Orientation:
It is a well established fact today that synergistic teams help give better results as compared to individual efforts. Each organization makes its efforts to create teams that will have complimentary skills and will effectively work together.

6. Aggressiveness:
Every organization also lays down the level of aggressiveness with which their employees work. Some businesses like Microsoft are known for their aggression and market dominating strategies.

7.  Stability:
While some organizations believe that constant change and innovation is the key to their growth, others are more focused on making themselves and their operations stable. The managements of these organizations are looking at ensuring stability of the company rather than looking at indiscriminate growth.