Organizational Culture

Aid in Changing and Improving the Company’s Organizational Culture A Proposal to Change and Improve the Company’s Organizational Culture All aspects of this proposal are based on a fictitious situation. I will summaries the aspects of the organizational culture and the aspects that could improve the culture of this fictitious organization. I currently hold the position of manager at a small, privately owned coffee bistro/book store. I have been an employee there for 3 years and have held the management title for 6 months. There are a total of 11 employees of differing sections.

As cited by Greenberg an organizational culture Is the shared beliefs, expectations, or core values of the all the people within the organization (Schneider, 1990). The proposal outline will be structured around this premise. The organizational culture of the organization where I work There are 6 different kinds of cultures wealth organizations. They are sensitively to others, Interest in new ideas, willingness to take risks, value placed on people, openness of available communication options, and friendliness and congeniality Martin, 1996).

I have observed that the organization for which I work embodies 4 of these, which I will discuss in detail in the final report. I also plan to discuss the influence that the owner has had on this culture as well as how the organization has what is referred to as a market culture. As manager I run the organization on behalf of the owner, who is the foremost authority. An organizations culture may be either strong or weak. I believe that we have the latter, as some employees have stated that they feel uninspired by the work that they do.

It is my belief that the culture is a relatively healthy one because the employees are valued members of the team and their opinions are respected. However, it can be improved. How new employees are accommodated in my organization In my experience a new employee is always warmly welcomed and informed (by either the owner, manager or colleagues) of the policies, beliefs, and expectations of the organization. Each employee will have an orientation week (which includes necessary training) when they begin their employ.

Other than the training, as anger I offer guidance as well as leading by example. How I could improve the culture of my organization I believe that I could assist in improving the culture by making use of the method of organizational memory. A statement of principle would lad In reinforcing the owners vowels. I also suggest that a more ethical organizational culture Is encouraged and will examine the Importance of this as well as how It can be accomplished through leadership and fellow employees.

The concept of creatively within the Individual and am Is vital and should be encouraged, this may encourage any employee that feels the work Is not Inspiring or fulfilling. I also suggest regular staff meetings to keep all up to date with progress or hindrances. It Is Important to reward excellence and accept mistakes, ensuring that a culture of open-communication can be established (Matheson, 201 3) . Offering incentives to new employees by rewarding their good on to others. The rewards and incentives do not need any monetary support as there are many ways, which will be provided in the report, to do so without cost.

Culture and diversity of a company is extremely important and will determine the success of a business. Deciding what culture Is best for a company Is challenging. A lot of focus should be on what type of leader Is most appropriate for the organization. Implementing strong values will strengthen the company. The way company’s adapts to change will also affect the way a company will prosper during challenging times. Founded by Nick Swimming In 1999 Capos Company is a solely web based retailer. Nick decided he wanted to create a company after he spent hours searching the entire mall for a pair of shoes and could not find them.

He then attempted to find the shoes on line and realized there was not a website specific to shoes. After his experience he decided there was a market for this type of industry. Originally Capos was created to be an online store that offered the widest selections of shoes available all in one place. Since, the company has evolved over time and now is selling a great selection of Items rather than Just shoes. They have boarded their selections to both women and men’s clothing along with everyday household Items. They provide free quick shipping and returns.

The overall goal is to “provide the absolute best service online-not just in shoes, but in any category (Capos, 1999-2014). The Culture of Capos Capos has created a very unique and valuable culture. They have implemented what Is called the “Capos Family Corey Values” that sets the foundation of the entire company. These core values are listed on their company’s website and are recommended for employees to follow on a day to day base. They believe that employees can be motivated, involved and happy to come to work while providing excellent service to customers.

Capos creates a clear line of communication, encouraging employees and constantly motivating them. They want their employees to be innovated, creative and “do more with less” (Capos, 1999-2014). Most importantly they want their employees to ‘WOW through customer service. This provides an environment that makes employees want to work. They take time to focus on each employee ensuring they are put Into the right position and properly trained for success. Capos believes this will lead to employee longevity and growing leaders for the future.

Their hard work does not go unnoticed and for the past 6 years Capos has been named in the as one of the FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work (Capos, 1999-2014) A random act of kindness weekly parade is the norm at Capos. This Includes selecting 3 random employees each week, dressing them up in funky hats and/or props, taking their photo and Glenn them gift. This falls under ones of their core values creating fun and a little weirdness. Yelling spontaneously at other employees for fun or trying to make one another laugh also emphasizes the core value.

There are four main types of organizational cultures. They include hierarchal, market driven, clan, and adaptable/flexible culture. Capos organizational culture only one type of organizational culture. Capos falls under two categories, the clan culture and adaptable/flexible culture (William, 2013). Clan culture represents a family-type organization (Savory, 2013). This culture involves building strong relationships and development of employees through training. Clan culture employees collaborate with coworkers and are caring for each other.

Two of Capos core values include building open and honest relationships with communications and creating positive teams and family spirit (Capos, 1999- 2014). Capos is willing to change and adapt. This is why the company also follows under adaptable/flexible organizational culture. The adaptable/flexible culture involves creating new ideas and preparing for future improvements, which is something Capos practices (Savory, 2013). The company has already determined that in the future 30% of all venders/seller transactions will be mad online within the United States.

Their vision is to be the company that offers the best service and the largest selections, thus resulting in most customers’ purchases coming from their website (Capos, 1999-2014). Capos is constantly changing and always looking for the newest, most retrieve solutions to solve any issues. Capos embodies these particular culture behaviors because the CEO, Tony Whish, honestly believes this is the best way to run a company. He treats his employees like family. He personally believes in the values and culture of the company.

Tony wants his employees to be happy and truly believes this is return will transfer to customers. Capos values and culture is not only the guidelines for the company but overall should be guidelines they follow in life (capos, 1999-2014). The best suited leader for Capos Company is a twenty-first-century leader. This errors should be able to adapt to both Transformational and transactional leadership styles. A transformational and transactional leader will require someone who and foresee a vision and have the motivation to accomplish.

This type of person requires creativity and innovation skill with the ability to make decisions. The type of leadership this person should have is supportive leadership style. They should be approachable and friendly and a allow employees feel equal around them. It will be important to provide a friendly atmosphere where employees feel comfortable to be open and trusting with their leader. Given that Capos sales multiple categories of items, they are not at a high risk for a large demand to decline.

If some of the company’s category items do decline, Capos has the option to sell different items that are currently in demands. Since the company is still growing there are more markets that Capos can branch out to widen their options if needed. They have recently connect forces with Amazon and this had open a lot more doors and customers (Capos, 1999-2014). As for now, shoes are extremely important to people and fashion. It does not appear that Capos is at a high risk for a large decline in demand for their products.

Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is a global financial services firm headquartered in New York City serving a diversified group of corporations, governments, financial institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley also operates in 36 countries around the world, with over 600 offices and a workforce of over 60,000. Paul Nasr, as senior managing director in Morgan Stanley thought the performance evaluation data for his brilliant producer, Rob Parson. Parson was a strong revenue producer. Nasar had promised the promotion when he recruited Parson to Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley’s people are the source of their competitive advantages.

They regard team work and innovation, by developing and utilizing our employees abilities to the fullest and treating each other with dignity and respect. Their leadership, that is “one firm” recognized that clients interested with the firm at many different points of intersection. The Capital Market Services (CMS) division at Morgan Stanley was created as part of an effort to make the firm more responsive to client needs. It was an explicitly interdisciplinary entity designed to serve as a link between the Investment Banking Division (IBD) and the sales and trading arms of the firm, Equity and Fixed Income.

The organizational structure was intended to provide clients with more focused attention and service. It also was a mechanism that allowed cross-divisional and avoided feuds over how to allocate fees across different sub-units. In Paul Nasr’s opinion, there are a lot of investment banks that have little corporate culture and little infrastructure. These are firms where the “franchise” is not attracting business: individual professionals are. The ability to go out, bring in the business, and write up the ticket depends solely on the entrepreneurial ability of the individual.

This means that firms turn a blind eye to certain behaviors, because the pursuit of the business and survival were more important. If you break a few eggs internally to get a ticket written with a major client, nobody is going to raise eyebrows and say, “hey, slow down. We don’t want to break eggs. ” At Morgan Stanley, this just is not true. Here the franchise matters, the culture is important, and the firm cares a lot about the integrity of the process. Even he is not the typical Morgan Stanley type, he does not fit the profile at all and he didn’t go to prestigious schools but it doesn’t matter.

Parson accepted the job and joined Morgan Stanley as a market coverage professional in the Capital Markets division focusing on financial institutions. Nasr trusts Parson and praised his client relationship skills. Nasr regards that Parson is unique individual, unique in his drive, his pursuit of business and his ambition. Mack when he became president of Morgan Stanley was a firmwide, 360-degree performance evaluation process through which all of the professionals in the firm were evaluated by superiors and colleagues as well as subordinates.

Top management at Morgan Stanley had introduced the new performance evaluation process amidst great fanfare with the explicit goal of changing the culture of the firm. Mack believed that changing the criteria by which people were evaluated and compensated would encourage employees to conform to a new way of doing business that emphasized team-work, cooperation, and cross-selling. This case is showed how the Parson’s existence can be influenced too much in Morgan Stanley. Rob Parson is a unique individual, He is unique in his drive.

He is unique in his pursuit of business. He is unique in his ambition. His knowledge of markets is excellent and he connects well with clients. And at the same time, he is unique in how many eggs he breaks every day. Everywhere he goes you have to follow him and pick up the broken eggs and pit them back together. Nast believed that it hadn’t mattered that Parson had been “breaking eggs” at his last job because it was such a different place. How Parson’s strategy for the firm can be effects? Because Parson know that it should know concern and need of clients.

His clients love him. Every time they come to New York from anywhere around the world, they want to take him to dinner. And you want to go out to dinner with him because he is probably one of the most amusing, entertaining, and interesting people to be with. Parson also thinks importantly interdependent with other professionals in the firm. Namely, Nexus; He understands that the market coverage professional is the nexus of all this information – market, product and client. If he understands those things, then he has a much better chance of doing business.

Novotel was founded in 1967 by Paul Dubrule and Gerard Pellison, neither of whom came from a hotel background. Driven by an ambitious enterpreneurial spirit, they expanded they empire by building new hotels and buying existing hotel chains. This case study focuses on Novotel in Europe, where Novotel is the market leader with 214 Novotel in 18 countries. From the beginning when they opened their first hotel, Dubrule and Pellison approached hotel management differently from their competitors. Several distinctive innovation such standarized concept, employees that where trained to do a variety of tasks, and numbers of other inovative practices that have since become standard.

However, as the Novotel Network expanded, control become problematic, and standards were slipping. By the late 1980s Novotel had grown immensely. In order to manage those dispersed hotels, an nine-layered management structure had evolved. 1990s brought a period of changing fortunes for Novotel. In the spring of 1992, there were signs of profit decline. In that year, Phillip Brizon and Gilles Pellison were named as the two new co-presidents of Novotel, and given a clear mandate to introduce major changes. The changes included selecting general managers, developing an assesment center, changing the structure and operations of the administrative corporate center, changing the internal structure, changing work routines, developing team works, developing progress groups, and trainings for reinforcing and cementing the changing routines and work practices of the organization.

Analysis These analysis below are based on theories that are mentioned in Organizational Behavior, written by Kreitner and Kinicki.  Organizational Culture The effort to discover Novotel’s cultural history insipired the achievement of new ideas and accord. It then helped the core management team to identify and recommend future directions for the organization. The team identified the need to place the hotel guest at the top of the organization. This identification led to some changes in Novotel. The problem was that the culture itself had already been faded during few decades of Novotel’s prosperity.

To make the culture affect the organization effectively, they needed to use some mechanism to embed the culture to fit the current environmental situation. The mechanisms that can be used includes formal statements of organizational philosophy, vision, mission, values and materials used for socialization, the design of physical spaces, deliberating role modelling, and so on. Those mechanism involves teaching process in which the organizational members teach each other about the organization’s preferred values, beliefs, expectations, and behaviors.

Some of these mechanism have already been used by the Novotel’s management, for example by informing their staff about the Retour vers le Futur project and introducing its principles into their Novotel. However, it was not easy to convice most of the staff members that the effort might work, and that the project was intended to help eliminate hierarchies, not to create them. Thus, we can say that there should be better ways that can be done to introduce the change.

Organizational Decline The problem that happened in Novotel during the early 90s was an organizational decline that was shown by the decline of its profit. It was caused partly by the fact that Novotel lost its benefit as the innovator of the hospitality. There were so many other companies that copied Novotel’s strategies, which made Novotel lose its competitive advantage. According to Kreitner ; Kinicki, the time to start doing something about organizational decline is when everything is going right.

During the period of success, usually, a company becomes slower in responding the competitive threats. However, there are some early warning signs that should be monitored in order to reorganize in a timely and effective manner. Some of those signs are loss of effective communication, outdated organizational structure, decreased innovation, and cumbersome administrative procedures. These warning signs actually appeared in Novotel, and later were being monitored.

The Changing Shape of Organization The changes in the internal structure of Novotel was the reduced number of supervisory levels. After the changes, there were only three steps between staff and GM, that are staff, heads of departments, and the GM. The new organizational pattern in Novotel can be classed as hourglass organization, where there are relatively small executive group that coordinate efforts of numerous operating personnel who make goods or render services. Lateral transfers are common in this type of organization. Management will compensate for the lack of promotion opportunities with job rotation. The carreer orientation may also be changed from position orientation to competence orientation.

In short we can say that the organizational culture is a common perception held by the organizations members, a system of shared meaning. This system of shared meaning is a set of key characteristics that the organization values. Organizational culture is concerned with how employees perceive the characteristics of the culture. During a merger two different organizational cultures have to be combined and after that they have to form a new organizational culture.

In 2001 two big IT manufacturers decided to merge, this was one of the biggest mergers in the history. The problem of the merger was with the merging of the two different business cultures that HP and Compaq had. HP on the one hand was like a family and everything was very friendly, and on the other hand Compaq had a more aggressive culture.Looking at the situation during this merger we can say that the biggest problem was the employees of HP. Because most of the employees worked there for a long time and they strongly believed in their culture, they wanted to hang on to the past situation. They were not used to changes and were very much connected to each other.

The employees of Compaq on the other hand came from a dynamic culture in which they were more used to changes, and along with that the Compaq culture didn’t have a high sociability which means that the employees cared less for there colleagues that were dismissed. We are going to do this by looking at the famous example of the merger between Hewlett Packard and Compaq. Before we can talk about changing organization cultures we must first of all make clear what an organizational culture exactly is. After we made clear what an organizational culture is we are going to introduce HP and Compaq with a brief description of their cultures before the merge, followed by the problems, the causes and the recommendations of the merge.

What is an organizational culture In short we can say that the organizational culture is a common perception held by the organizations members, a system of shared meaning. This system of shared meaning is a set of key characteristics that the organization values. Organizational culture is concerned with how employees perceive the characteristics of the culture. To specify the word characteristics we can show the seven primary characteristics that capture the essence of an organizations culture.

1) Innovation and risk taking: The degree to which employees are encouraged to be innovative and take risks.

2) Attention to detail: The degree to which employees are expected to exhibit precision and attention to detail.

3) Outcome orientation: The degree to which management focuses on results.

4) People orientation: The degree to which management takes there people in consideration when making decisions.

5) Team orientation: The degree to which work is based on teams rather than individuals.

6) Aggressiveness: The degree to which people are competitive rather then easygoing.

7) Stability: The degree to which an organization looks at maintaining the current situation rather then growing. Because a culture is a feeling that you get within a company it can be different for each employee within a company. Mostly this is why within an organization there is a dominant culture and one or more subcultures.

The dominant culture expresses the core values that are shared by a majority of the organizations employees. This means when we are talking about the ‘organizations culture’ we are talking about the dominant culture within the organization. Subcultures within an organization include the core values of the dominant culture plus an additional set of values that are unique to the members of a specific department or a geographical separated group. As long as the core values of the company are widely shared throughout the company it is no problem that there are numerous of subcultures. When the core values are widely shared we can say that an organization as a strong culture.

What different kind of organizational cultures do exist To answer this question I used the four-culture typology model which is made by Goffee and Jones. This model provides some interesting insights on the different organizational cultures and the guidance of potential employees. Goffee and Jones say that two dimensions determine the organizational culture. The first dimension of the four culture typology they call sociability. Sociability is a measure of friendliness.

High sociability means that people will do things for each other without expecting something in return. In a highly sociable culture people will also treat each other in a friendly and caring way. The second dimension in the model is the solidarity. Solidarity is a measure of task orientation. A high solidarity means that employees will not look much at personal preferences, but look at the common interests and common goals. With these two dimensions we can make the four culture typology in which we can distinct four different cultures.

DPC was a Joint venture with General Electric and Enron in India. 2nd slide Bechtel has strong corporate culture, values and ethics and it shows a great discipline in project management. It has a performance-based leadership and its latest performance-based leadership program is called ‘Employee Engagement,’ which says that if you engage employees effectively in a good relationship with a supervisor, you will create a highly satisfying environment. Employees who are happy and believe they are treated well by the leaders, they perform well too.

One of the ain organizational goals is the motivation and satisfaction of the employees and as Riley Bechtel has claimed “Give Bechtel’s people a challenge and they’ll make history’. Finally, Bechtel provides equal opportunities for everyone. However, employees usually complain about the fact that the majority of Jobs are in Asia and Middle East, which makes them relocate every so often. 3rd slide Bechtel’s Corporation core goal is to strengthen local economies, helping its customers, wherever their facilities are found, to achieve their objectives.

It creates usiness-building opportunities for local firms, employing area workers and professionals, and advancing its customer’s vision. Also, the company supports local growth, skills training, and supply chain development; The Company supports the protection of the environment and that’s why it minimizes its construction footprint; lastly, it operates to maximize resource efficiency. 4th slide Let’s talk about the Similarities and differences between Bechtel and GE. First, we will discuss the similarities.

Both Bechtel and GE are decentralized companies, which ean that the power and the authority to make decisons delegate from head office to lower and local levels. Less uniformity, decisions made in relation to local circumstances. Centralised:

1. Keep decision making power at the top of the hierarchy.
2. Don’t delegate to local or lower levels.

Also, Bechtel adopts the Six Sigma approach; indeed, it was the first EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) company to launch Six Sigma in 2000.

Moreover, both companies want to foster and reinforce the performance of its employees as well as the working nvironment and so, they create projects teams. Another similarity is that the give emphasis on the cultural exchange, thus they work with local firms trying to provide them with the required knowledge on construction and engineering. Finally, both companies promote diversity. the employment of more than 350,000 people in both companies prove that they try to help and occupy local people, giving them the opportunity to produce, create and innovate; all these factors contribute to one of the Let’s see the differences.

Bechtel unlike GE alters its policies for local requirements, or example, through performance reviews as well as the employees have significantly influenced the cultural change. Another difference is the size of the company, since GE is much bigger employing more than 305,000 people, while Bechtel has 53,000 employees. Finally, the last difference concerns the type of projects, since Bechtel adopts projects mainly to reinforce its employees, such as “Toward 2001”, while GE adopts different approaches to foster its working and corporate environment, such as Work-out and Six Sigma.

This research paper seeks to identify the extent by which leaders can influence, change and even manipulate organizational culture for the sake of organizational development and achieving organizational goals. This research paper will fulfill this objective by putting Nexen Incorporated in the limelight. The organizational structure and the culture that comes along with organizational structure will be used in this research paper as vital details in portraying the picture of how different organizational elements (culture and leadership) interact and affect each other.

Furthermore, this research paper will exert all possible efforts to draw out an interrelated analysis of these parts to the status of Nexen, Inc. in both Canada and Yemen offices. Nexen, Inc. is one of the most successful corporations able to integrate international joint ventures in its business plan. The expansion of Nexen, Inc. as a Calgary based company highlighted the financial and business sectors’ progresses and achievements in the twenty first century (Reference for Business, 2010). The successes of Nexen cannot be all tackled in this research paper since they are both numerous and complex.

As for this research paper, the success of Nexen, Inc. in establishing its Yemen operations will be specifically used to measure the influence that leaders can have in the formation process of organizational culture. Introduction: What is Nexen? Nexen, Inc. or the Canadian Nexen Petroleum is the fourth largest oil and gas company in Canada that was able to establish its operations in the Yemen, Canada, Gulf of Mexico, and off shore West Africa (Reference for Business, 2010). Canadian Nexen Petroleum represents itself through its successes such as the multibillion dollars total earnings since its time of establishment.

Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s stock price increased even amidst the economic struggle due to the recent recessions indicates the sturdy management of the company in mitigating the effects of even the most dreaded financial crunches (Walcoff, 2010). This undeniable success moves this research paper to take a look in the internal organizational culture of Canadian Nexen Petroleum; not just for the sake of assessment but also for the sake of uncovering the management scheme of such as successful company. Nexen, Inc.

as established earlier is one of the most successful corporations in establishing itself in the international business arena, as seen in its international joint ventures in Yemen and Africa. However, amidst the company’s involvement in the global business arena its management remains to be centralized and hierarchical in nature. In its main office in Calgary, Canada, Marvin Romanow leads Canadian Nexen Petroleum as its President and CEO (Nexen Inc. , 2010). Kevin Reinhart assists Romanow through his position of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (Nexen Inc.

, 2010). These two key figures represent the highest managerial positions in Nexen, Inc. ’s operations. Romanow as mandated in the bylaws of Canadian Nexen Petroleum have the power and prerogative to set the “tone” in the leadership and management of the whole corporation (Nexen Inc. , 2010). As the highest voted officer in the whole company, the whole Nexen Company deems that Romanow provides the most effective type of leadership through professional corporate management and governance practices (Nexen Inc. , 2010).

Kevin Reinhart complements the leadership of Romanow through the strategic and financially focused management practices that the Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s bylaws mandate Reinhart with (Nexen Inc. , 2010). The expertise and support of the other officers of Canadian Nexen Petroleum complements the leadership of Romanow and Reinhart. The observable demarcations between offices and departments indicate the high level of bureaucratization in this company. The organizational structure of Nexen, Inc. paved the way for the establishment of supervisorial positions in its local offices such as in Yemen.

Gregor Mawhinney leads Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen’s operations as its President and General Manager with the assistance of Ali Sohaiki as the Executive Director of Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen. The same can be said with the Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen, offices are specifically mandated and designed to cater to specific company needs. The only distinction between the two offices can be seen in the demographical difference of the markets of these offices. The leadership of Romanow and Reinhart is in context with the birthplace of the company with employees sharing the same culture as its management.

On the other hand, the Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen’s management under Mawhinney and Sohaili constantly needs to find a level ground with its employees to avoid conflicts that result from the cultural disparities of the two sides. It can be generalized, that the situations that the Canada based leadership and Yemen based leadership find themselves are not only their difference of context, but may also be the defining factor of their leadership strategy difference that would be established in the latter parts of this research paper.

Organizational Culture: Definition Defining organizational culture leads to two particularly distinct polarities in the paradigm of organizational studies. First, organizational culture is the collective consciousness, which naturally results from the evolution of social groups such as the formation of communities and civilizations (National Defense University, 2010). On the other hand, organizational culture is also defined as the social product of everyday interactions among members of a certain group.

These tools are fuelled by the application of tools such as organizational structures. In this second definition, organizational culture arises within the context and setting provided by the structure per se of the organization (National Defense University, 2010). The second definition’s recognition that organizational culture can be created outside the organization makes it the viable definition for this research study.

The second definition provides the leeway needed for the establishment that leaders as part of the organizational structure can create or manipulate the organizational culture for the holistic benefits of their organization (National Defense University, 2010). Ultimately, both definitions require the collective understanding of the members of the group. Members of the group should be able to recognize and comprehend the parts of their group’s organizational culture such as its history, ethical considerations, value formations and conventions for the sake of truly being a part of the group (Driskill, 2005, p.

3). There are different levels of analysis in organizational culture- behavior and artifacts, values and assumptions and beliefs (National Defense University, 2010). Behavior and artifacts level represents the most observable manifestation of organizational culture (National Defense University, 2010). The behavior and artifacts present in organizations can be seen in common workplace conventions such as maintaining order and even the simple compliance to the workplace’s dress code (National Defense University, 2010).

Values level on the other hand may not be as observable as the level of behavior and artifacts (National Defense University, 2010). The values level of organizational culture may depend on the organization’s statement of acceptable values or it may become the underlying unannounced behavior of the employee’s individual predisposition (National Defense University, 2010). Finally, assumptions and beliefs are considered to be the deepest aspect of organizational culture (National Defense University, 2010).

According to the experts of organizational culture, assumptions and beliefs only come into being when members of the group become accustomed with the first two levels of organizational culture (National Defense University, 2010). In this level, organizational culture embodies unconscious thoughts from the member of the group that equally comply to the prescriptions of the first two levels of organizational culture (National Defense University, 2010). Prominent organizational studies attribute to these levels the full appreciation of organizational culture.

In line with this, this research paper will follow the same predisposition. Organizational culture is not the only convention present in organizations; organizational subcultures are also present in some organizations such as companies and corporations (National Defense University, 2010). These types of organizations are usually formal and require conventional practices; organizational subcultures in this setting are seen as the acclimatizing elements of a new member to the existing and relatively bigger organizational culture (National Defense University, 2010).

Organizational subcultures also assist those who refused to believe that a holistic organizational culture is always present. In reality, there are those that contest the existence of organizational culture. Organizational Culture: Alterations and Changes Discussing organizational culture leads to the fact that organizational culture is not permanent, especially in cases where organizational culture impedes organizational development and progress (Banksinternational. net, 2005).

If leaders are true and worthy of their positions they should be able to easily detect situations that would require changes in the organizational culture of their organization (National Defense University, 2010). Even if knowing that there is a need to change is dramatically different from knowing what to change in organizational culture, leaders should be up to the task of having the imperative to start necessary changes for the benefit of the whole organization (Schein, 2004, p. 317).

There are two common situations where changes in organizational culture are necessities. First, leaders must immediately alter some parts if not the whole organizational culture in situations where the culture appears to be dysfunctional and counterproductive to organization as a whole (Schein, 2004, p. 317). The second situation will be in during situations where there are integrated new members that have their very own assumptions and beliefs, values and behavior and artifacts (Schein, 2004, p. 317).

These situations can easily trigger negative effects toward the organization such as resistance to cooperation, which can result to malfunction of organizational structures and even to the reinforcement of counterproductive culture based conflicts. In situations like these, organizational leaders such as with the leaders of Canadian Nexen Petroleum and Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen should confront the problems right away even if it may mean the need to scrap the whole organizational culture of the company.

A direct confrontation on organizational culture problems will not only mitigate the problem; it will also allow the whole organization to create a new organizational culture that would provide a better fit for all the members through compromise. Organizational changes can be seen as attempts to create harmony in organizations with members who are unaccustomed to the existing organizational culture- such as the case of Yemen based Nexen. There are undeniable differences between Canada and Yemen contextualized organizational cultures; those differences will be further explored in this research paper.

The Differences in Organizational Culture of Different Offices under one Company: the Case of Canadian Nexen Petroleum and Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen This research paper will identify the extent of manipulation of organizational leaders in creating organizational culture by comparing the differences in the organizational cultures of Canadian Nexen Petroleum and Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen offices. There are no written materials that specifically draw out the differences of the organizational cultures of these offices.

Due to this, this research paper would use cultural differences in Canada and Yemen. The Canadian and Yemeni cultural differences in this research paper will classified according to the three levels of organizational cultures that are established earlier. Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s Organizational Culture-Canada As a Calgary based company, Canadian Nexen Petroleum is almost able to hire employees that are born and raised in Canada. The citizenship of employees are noted because it gives a comparative advantage in understanding what appears to be as the shared culture in the Canadian Nexen Petroleum.

In terms of beliefs and artifacts, Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s organizational conduct is similar to other conventions in terms of addressing supervisors and observing the dress code in the workplace. The dress code in Canadian Nexen Petroleum is observed and followed at a certain level of formality and even convenience (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). Those who are deemed to have more workloads usually dress up with less formal attire to improve movement convenience in the workplace. On the other hand, those who assume higher positions in the company observe strict formal dress codes.

In terms of addressing colleagues, the Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s organizational culture dictates that colleagues under the same status in the company can address each other on the first name basis; while supervisors and managers are addressed with title affixes in their names (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). Values in the organizational culture of Canadian Nexen Petroleum usually resides with the importance that individual employees put in the establishment of healthy relationship with their colleagues (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s management favors those that exert effort in establishing relationships in the workplace because harmonious relationships are usually attributed with productivity and effectiveness (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). The same can be said for supervisors and managers, Canadian Nexen Petroleum seeks to provide mechanisms that would constantly allow their high position employees to check how those of the lower positions deem the effectiveness of their leadership styles (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

It can be generalized that employees of Canadian Nexen Petroleum use the company’s mandate and personal dispositions to justify their attempts in establishing workplace bonds. The values system in Canadian Nexen Petroleum manifests itself through the assumptions and beliefs established in the workplace. Fully inculcating the value of building relationships in the workplace became an assumption and a belief in the Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s organizational culture.

The statistics that eighty-three percent of Canadian supervisors and managers believe that cultural fit is more important as compared to competencies proves the previous assumption (Waterstone Human Capital, 2010). Due to this, applicants with a foreseeable chance of being included in the workplace relationship have subjective advantage in the Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s hiring program. The company’s dedication in building workplace-based relationships for the company’s improvement led their hiring department to opt in adapting such hiring schemes.

Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s Organizational Culture- Yemen Parts of Nexen Petroleum’s organizational culture in Canada are similar to the dominant organizational culture in Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen; but it is worth it to note some differences between the two organizational cultures. In terms of beliefs and artifacts, Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen’s organization culture dictates that everyday office clothes should be made of lightweight fabrics to insure comfort and convenience, given that the climate in Yemen is hot (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

The lightweight design of the everyday clothes of Yemeni employees is still required to comply the norm of conservativeness in dressing, which means that majority of body parts should be covered (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). The manner of addressing colleagues is similar to that of the Canadian office. However, when addressing superiors proper titles are always observed in Yemen such as Sheikh and Excellency (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

The Canadian office and Yemen office differs in the workplace environment that their beliefs and artifacts built. The Canadian office displays a highly professional working environment; while the Yemen office is dominantly laid back due to the lax attitude of the Yemeni employees (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). The norm that the Yemen office of Canadian Nexen Petroleum exemplifies productivity and output reliance even while being less stressed and more relaxed as compared to their Canadian counterpart (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

In terms of values, the Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen’s organizational culture prescribes that social relationships should be established and maintained in harmony (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). In the Yemeni concept of social networks, friendships no matter how casual or professional in orientation should be taken care of because these relationships can determine the successes and failures of a company (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). Yemenis expresses courtesy through constant contact such as the use of telephone, this makes the use of communication utilities widely used (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

Religion, gender, class and ethnicity are other factors that contribute to the values formation of the Yemen office of Canadian Nexen Petroleum. The gender roles in Yemeni context is constraining and limiting in the female sex. Even if there are drastic improvements in the abolishment of gender roles, male superiority is still observable in managerial positions (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). Religion and everything else that come along with it are treated with outmost value in the Yemeni context.

The religiousness of Yemenis even moved the management of Canadian Nexen Petroleum to allow prayers and religious rites that are time sensitive to be conducted even in the workplaces (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). Class and ethnicity are vital in the organizational culture of the Yemen office of Canadian Nexen Petroleum primarily because Yemen is a tribal country. Ethnic and tribal affiliations play a large part in determining the future of any employee (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

Tribal affiliations can determine bias and favoritism among the managers in almost the same weight as productivity and output. Finally, the assumptions and beliefs in the Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen’s organizational culture revolve around the deeper implications of their values, artifacts and behavior. The importance that Yemenis put on the relationships they are able to establish makes privileges and favoritism common in workplaces (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

Yemeni managers are commonly founded to be guilty in giving privileges and granting favoritism request due to the strong notion of friendship and relationship (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). This part of the Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen’s organizational culture is so strong that there are cases where foreigner managers are put into key positions to avoid the invocation of relationship-based favoritism and privileges (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009).

The importance of social relationships can also be seen in the assumptions and beliefs level of Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen’s organizational culture through the manner of confronting conflicts. Conflict resolution is usually conducted in secrecy or at least in a private forum to avoid being noted as offensive and insulting (Centre for Intercultural Learning, 2009). Issues needed to be addressed in the Canada and Yemen offices of Canadian Nexen Petroleum International Joint Venture.

Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s choice to expand its operation in Yemen comes along with difficulties not just simply in terms of logistics and finance. The company’s move to create the Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen came along with the same prerequisites such as that of an international joint venture. Technically speaking, Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen is not a joint venture since the Yemen based company simply serves as an annex of the company’s operations; this is different from the conventional definitions of an international joint venture.

International joint venture is a collaboration of two or more companies or corporations that decided to conjoin their operations for the sake of company growth and success (Li, Xin, & Pillutla, 2002, p. 320). However, it is inevitable to observe that organizational problems that international joint ventures experience are also similar to the problems faced by the Canadian Nexen in their expansion to Yemen. The cultural barriers among the members of the collaborating parties impede effective communication among the members resulting to the failure of the whole venture (Li, Xin, & Pillutla, 2002, p. 321).

Two sides of the World. It should be constantly noted that in the subjects of this research paper has a default difference due to the basic fact that Canada and Yemen are from different spheres of the world. Since the start of organizational studies, Western biases supersede other contexts such as that of the Arab world (Ali, 1996, p. 5). Organizational Security in Nexen Organizations including Canadian Nexen Petroleum and Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen are conscious of organizational security.

Organizational security represents the overall readiness of organizational structures to insure the development of the organization and of its members. Tools such as education of employees, security policies and collaborated management-grass root initiatives are some example of organizational security. As for the case of the two Nexen offices, organizational security practices are seen in the scholarship program in Yemen and the Integrity Program launched in Canada. These programs became structural tools that aid Romanow, Reinhart, Mawhinney and Sohaiki in leading Nexen.

As a foreign organization seeking to be integrated in a foreign land, Canadian Nexen Petroleum Yemen confronts the tasks and challenges of the cultural disparity between Canada and Yemen. The management opted to confront the problem but also decided not to be aggressive about it. Instead of generalizing work standards with that of the Canadian organizational culture, the Calgary-based company tried to get the trust and support of the local citizens of Yemen. Canadian Nexen Petroleum launched their scholarship program that specifically caters to Yemeni students who would want to pursue a career in Nexen (Nexen Inc. , 2010).

This scholarship program as a form of organizational security utilizes the culture and education exchanges that the students experience in Canada to insure a younger generation that fully appreciates the importance of the tie up of Yemen and Canadian Nexen Petroleum. So far, the scholarship program created young Yemeni professionals with the ample skills needed in operating with Canadian Nexen Petroleum offices. Canadian Nexen Petroleum launched its Integrity Program as early as 1997, which is mandatory to all of its employees including top ranked officials and even the new hires (Singer, 2009).

The Integrity Program seeks to integrate ethicality and proper conscientious conduct in Canadian Nexen Petroleum’s employees (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2010). This program launched with a series of workshop that teach participants on basic proper workplace conduct, the need for joining productivity and ethicality and even individual accountability. As an organizational security tool, this program was able to get its needed support from managerial positions up to the grass root employees of Canadian Nexen Petroleum, including the Yemen office. Conclusion

The organizational cultures in the Canada-based and Yemen-based offices of Canadian Nexen Petroleum are similar in many aspects. The two offices share the organizational culture in the level of behavior and artifacts, some parts of the values level and almost no part of the assumptions and beliefs level. What does this difference imply in relation to the whole research paper? The differences between the leadership of the two geographically and demographically different offices prove that leaders would go out of their way to change the organization’s culture for the sake of insuring productivity.

The default difference between Canada based and Yemen based workplaces of Canadian Nexen Petroleum pushes its leaders to create organizational security tools and inter cultural leadership tools that would modify the organizational culture of these offices toward single goal- productivity. The scholarship program was launched not just to create Yemeni professionals; it was also launched to create professionals that can lead the Yemeni office without the tensions that a foreign manager could bring.

Canadian Nexen Petroleum is smart enough to integrate itself to the existing organizational culture in Yemen. It was able to mitigate the probable tensions and difficulties of operating foreign. The Integrity program was also introduced to insure that workplaces emanate a general attitude towards productivity. This program created a sense of security for the employees of Nexen; this allows them to work in a more productive pace. Taking note of all of these, it can be said that leaders would modify organizational cultures for the sake of productivity.

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