1.1 Background of the Study
Organizational culture as a part of management originated as far back as in the 1940’s but got polarized in the early 1980’s (Reid, 2015). Human relations theories viewed the informal, nonmaterial, interpersonal, and moral bases of cooperation and commitment as perhaps more important than the formal, material and instrumental controls stressed by the rational system theorists. The human relations perspective drew its inspiration from even earlier anthropological and sociological work on culture associated with groups and societies (Geerts, Mead, Durkheim, 2000; Weber, 2014).
Attention to organizational culture lost ground as organizational science, and social science in general became increasingly quantitative. To the extent that research on organizational culture survived, its focus shifted to its more measurable aspects, particularly employee attitudes and perceptions and/or observable organizational conditions thought to correspond to employee perceptions (i.e. the level of individual involvement, the degree of delegation, and the extent of social distance as implied by status differences and the amount of coordination across units). This renewed interest in organizational culture represented a return to the early organizational literature but it went far beyond this literature in contributing important new insights and ways of thinking about the role, importance and characteristics of organizational culture (Reid, 2015).
Also, research on the effect of culture on organizational performance and investigations into how organizational culture are created, maintained, and changed received greater attention. The main difference was that organizational culture was now viewed less as a natural, organically emergent phenomenon and more as a manipulable and manageable competitive asset.
An organization’s current customs, traditions and general way of doing things are largely due to what it has done before and the degree of success it has had with those endeavors, (Kanter, 1980). The founders of an organization traditionally have a major impact on that organization’s early culture. They have a vision of what the organization should be. They are unconstrained by previous customs or ideologies.
The small size that typically characterizes new organizations further facilitates the founders’ imposition of their vision on all organizational members. According to Uduak (2015), culture creation occurs in three ways. First, founders hire and keep only employees who think and feel the same way they do. Second, they indoctrinate and socialize these employees to their way of thinking and feeling. And finally, the founders’ own behaviour acts as a role model that encourages employees to identify with them and thereby internalize their beliefs, values and assumptions. When the organization succeeds, the founders’ vision becomes seen as a primary determinant of that success. At this point, the founder’s entire personality becomes embedded in the culture of the organization.
The culture at Hyundai, the giant Korean conglomerate, is largely a reflection of its founder Chung Ju Tung. Hyundia’s fiercely competitive style and its disciplined, authoritarian nature are the same characteristics often used to describe Chung. Other contemporary examples of founders who have had an immeasurable impact on their organization’s culture would include Bill Gates at Microsoft, Ingvar Kampard at the furniture retailer IKEA, Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman retail stores and Richard Branson at the Virgin group. Kilmann (2010) opines that culture in the organizational context can be described as the collective behaviour or styles of people, their attitude towards various constituents of business such as customers, co-workers, share-holders and so on and so forth and the common values that they share among themselves, which in fact acts like a binding force between them.
One is actually observing the culture of an organization, when he or she is using words such as hardworking, friendly, professional, ethical etc to describe the general behavior of the people. The culture decisively influences the priorities set by the organization, as it is the underlying value system in the organization that emphasizes things like customer focus, innovation, cost reduction, strong alliances, empowerment and control in response to the various business stimuli. Deal and
Kennedy (2000) posit that typically, culture building starts with the tenets of conduct valued by the founders and over time people develop a particular point of view of running the day – to – day operations. Certain traits and patterns of behaviour can be seen to develop based on what is encouraged by leaders at different levels. Patterns of behaviour typical to a company have their origin in the solutions that worked for the company in the past. Repeated success with a set way of working, gives rise to certain ideas and behaviours which gets embedded in the culture of the company. It is easy to conclude that past performance and success shapes organizational culture.
Armstrong (2010) opines that culture enables people to see the goal alignment and motivates them to higher levels of performance, as shared values make people feel good about the organization and commit their capability and potential sincerely for the company. Such strong culture acts like intrinsic motivator.
Empowerment, decisiveness, learning attitude, and team working are some of the attributes of strong organizational culture. Culture at this level is the real driver for superior performance and a definite source of competitive advantage that is very difficult for competitors to emulate. Toyota Lean production system is as much of tools, systems and processes as it is of the culture of the people there. Many companies have tried to copy the famed production system but none could do it with the same effectiveness. The reason – companies could copy the management system in place but not the underlying cultural strength rooted deep in the business philosophy of the company – understanding customer value, identifying value stream, one piece flow, pull system and striving for excellence.
Jones and George (2007) posit that personality is a way of understanding why all managers and employees, as individuals, characteristically think and behave in different ways. However, when people belong to the same organization, they often tend to share certain beliefs and values that lead them to act in similar ways.
Organizational culture comprises the shared set of beliefs, expectations, values, norms and work routine that influence how members of an organization relate to one another and work together to achieve organizational goals. In essence, organizational culture reflects the distinctive ways organizational members go about performing their jobs and relating to others inside and outside the organization. It may, for example, be a distinctive way in which customers in a particular hotel are treated from the time they are greeted at check-in until their stay is completed; or it may be the shared work routines that research teams use to guide new product development.
When organizational members share an intense commitment to cultural values, beliefs, and routines and use them to achieve their goals, a strong organizational culture exists. When organizational members are not strongly committed to a shared system of values, beliefs, and routines, organizational culture is weak. The stronger the culture of an organization, the more one can think about it as being the “personality” of an organization because it influences the way its members behave. Organizations that possess strong culture may differ on a wide variety of dimensions that determine how their members behave toward one another and perform their jobs. For example, organizations differ in terms of how members relate to each other (e.g; formally or informally), how important decisions are made (e.g. top-down or bottom-up), willingness to change (e.g; flexible or unyielding), innovation (e.g; creative or predictable), and playfulness (e.g; serious or serendipitous). Managers of different kinds of organizations deliberately cultivate and develop the organizational values and norms that are best suitable to their task and general environment, strategy, or technology. Organizational culture is maintained and transmitted to organizational members through the value of founder, the process of socialization, ceremonies and rites and stories and language. The bases of phenomenon that make the understanding of different groups or people that comes together to pursue a common objectives is culture.
The term culture refers to as a general state or habit of mind closely allied to human perception, Hector (2014). A cultured employee could be one who in character, behaviour, speech and comportment could not be impeached but whose image and personality are examples to most members or groups of the organization. Culture is those vast apparatus, partly material and partly spiritual and partly human by which human societies are organized into permanent and recognizable groupings. In organization level, culture is described as the aggregate of the social, ethnical, intellectual, artistic, governmental and industrial attainments characteristics of a group, state or nation and compared with other groups or nations. Many writers and scholars hold the belief that culture is the totality of the way of life evolved by a people in their attempts to meet the challenge of living in their environment, which gives order and meaning to their social, political, economic, aesthetic and religious norms and modes of organization thus distinguishing a people from their neighbors. So culture determines the normative, cognitive, value, production and authoritative systems of an organization. Culture regulates lives as well as interactions among its members and components.
Organizations as described by some authorities are seen as two or more people who work together in a structured manner to achieve a specific goals or set of goals. A high degree of organization performance is related to an organization, which has a strong culture with well integrated and effective set of values, beliefs and behaviours (2008). However, many researchers noted that culture could remain linked with superior performance only if the culture is able to adapt to changes in environmental conditions. Furthermore, the culture must not only be extensively shared, but it must also have unique qualities, which cannot be limited (Lewis, 2008).
Due to the high importance of a defined organizational culture in the performance of an organization, the researcher embarked on this study to ascertain how performance management can be used to achieve better productivity in selected food and beverages firm in Anambra State.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The intensification of research on organizational effectiveness has led to the identification of several organizational factors that have an influential role in the determination of organizational performance. Organizational culture is one such factor that has received much attention in organizational behavior. In the effort to understand the forms and consequences of organizational culture, the researcher has explored how various internal processes such as individual and organizational selection and socialization, characteristics of powerful members such as the organization’s founder or group of members influence the content and intensity of the consensus that exists about organizational values. Although several studies have focused on identifying the value dimensions that characterize an organization’s culture, only a few have investigated the extent to which an organization’s values affect performance. It is believed that organizational performance can be measured using capital market and financial indicators vis-à-vis several latent variables such as organizational structure, organizational values, task organization, climate, individual’s values, beliefs and leadership styles as seen in manufacturing industry like Hyundai, Ingvar Kampard and so on. This study is embarked upon to look into the exogenous and endogenous cultural and human impediments that affect culture-performance relationships in selected food and beverages firm in Anambra State, which among others are to pry into the human indices responsible for poor performance standard of most manufacturing organizations with a view to reversing them, culture and its compatibility with the type of industry, the degree of influence of organizational culture on the various cultural backgrounds in the workplace as against productivity, the welfare and performance reward culture of the organizations, adaptability of organizational culture to technological and innovative changes in the competitive environment.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
This study is essentially a critical evaluation of the relationship between performance management and organizational culture in selected food and beverages firm in Anambra State.
The specific objectives are;
iii. To ascertain the relationship between job satisfaction on employee turnover.
1.4 Research Questions
iii. To what extent do job satisfaction impact employee turnover.
1.5 Research Hypotheses
The following research hypotheses are formulated to guide this study:
Ho: Loyal employees are not easily retained in organizations.
Ho: There is no relationship between team work and customer satisfaction.
Ho: Job satisfaction does not impact employee turnover
1.6 Significance of the Study
In a work of this nature, a lot of people and organizations will benefit because of the relationship between culture and performance. Culture represents the social glue and generates a well-feeling; thus counteracting processes of differentiations which are an unavoidable part of organizational life. Organizational culture offers a shared system of meanings which is basis for communications and mutual understanding. Note should be taken that if these functions are not fulfilled in a satisfactory way, culture may significantly reduce the efficiency of an organization. Specifically, those that will benefit from this work includes: the government, business managers, Directors/Employers, Employees, Scholars/Researchers Statistical Bodies and Agencies, and industrialists in manufacturing companies, non-profit making organizations and the researcher himself as it will lead to the award of B.Sc. in Business Administration to him.
The research work will also benefit scholars, students and researchers who may find it worth of reference in their research work.
1.7 Scope of the Study
This study on the organizational culture and performance will be limited to food and Beverages Company in Anambra State. Therefore the researcher has decided to restrict the scope of this study to the identification of the extent to which organizational culture will improve organizational performance. The companies in view are as follows: Premium food and beverages, Onitsha, Hero bear in Onitsha.
1.8 Limitations of the Study
The researcher of this work did encounter some major problems in the course of this research.
Time was a problem as the time for the study was grossly inadequate. The researcher had to battle with keeping up with appointments and carrying on with his studies too.
The funds needed to facilitate the field work and research for this study was scarcely available due to the economic recession in the country. Also, access to materials to review was a major problem with a negative attitude encountered from the respondents who were generally lackadaisical in providing the needed response for this work due to fear of victimization from those whose ox maybe gored through the revelations of this study.
The researcher however was able to manage the little time and resources to see to the successful end of this research work.