Corporate Culture Enhance Organisational Performance Business Essay

Corporate Culture Enhance Organisational Performance Business Essay Organization culture is a source of sustained competitive advantage; corporate culture plays a very important role in organisational performance. By reviewing existing documents of the organizational culture research, we make a study of the theoretic elements of organizational culture and analyse its effect on firms performance. The study in this paper gives us a better understanding on how enterprises get better performance and establish the foundation of the successful corporations. The Hewlett Packard case analysis from Kotter and Heskett (1992) had confirmed that strong corporate culture enhances organisational performance Key words Organizational behaviour, organizational culture, firm performance Competitive advantage, resources, synergistic effect Introduction A recent study (Fun Yun et al. 2003) has investigated that the development of modern management science has been through three stages: Classical Management Theory, Behavioural Science Management Theory, and Management Theory Jungle (Harold Koonty 1961). In early 1980s the fourth stage organizational culture has began, this phase focuses on how to apply the cultural research results to the enterprise management. Organizational culture as a modern enterprise management theory and management strategy are more and more sought after from the business community and the academic circles from whole world. Some scholars believe that the enterprise competitive advantage not only can be relied on its capacity also with its ability in the organizational culture. However, many studies have shown that, when determining unique characteristics of a company, culture can even be decided for which strategic to choose. According to the view of Barneys (1986), culture is the continuous strategy for enterprises to give them a competitive advantage of the resources. Achieve competitive advantage at least in part rely on capacity. Therefore, the enterprises research extends to the key ability and resources such as culture is meaning very important. This literature review is revolve around cooperate culture and to discuss the basic theory of organizational culture and corporate culture for the influence of enterprise performance. Literature Review 1 Organizational culture theory research evolution process of a brief review The concept of organization culture is acknowledged by Pettigrew (1979) in the article organizational culture research , and in 1982 attracted the attention of academic and business management circles mainly due to few books published: Ouchi (1981) theory z; Pascale and Athos (1981) the Japanese management art L6; Deal Kennedy(1982) corporate culture , Peters Waterman(1982) search of excellence. Since then, organization of culture has opened a new page and a lot of organizational culture research paper is constantly emerging by group of distinguished researchers as Ouchi, Hofstede, Sehein, Wilkins etc, they are excellent at the area of organizational culture in their respective areas of expertise and conducted successful research. After the 80s the academics and businesses were mainly studying the organization culture management that were based on the following elements, comparative management culture, factual study of the culture and management of the cooperate culture and other relative elements of the culture. Hofstede (1980) points out variation of manage practices, similarity or dissimilarity due to different culture or countries, and hance finding out the effect of culture on organizational performance. As Lincoln and Kalleberg (1990) In their reseach of the United States and Japanese enterprises explored the work attitude with emphasis on the culture, and they visualize culture as a management tool for the organization control. This is also further illustrated by Sekaran and Snodgrass (1989) with four counties (United States, Japan, Sweden, Yugoslavia) showing the effect of culture on the organizations efficiency difference. Some culture researcher like Schein (1990) and Kotter and Heskett (1992) were using questionnaire or empirical data as research method. They are studying aims to determine if there is a correlation between organization culture and enterprises long term business performance. Considerable attention has been given to leadership and organization culture. Also there are other researcher consider effectiveness between coalition of culture and other factor during the organization management. Ogbonna et al. (2000) claims that when the enterprise face to pressures from external environment, the leader style impact organization culture and then further impact to organisation performance. Leadership style cannot be directly affect organizational performance and can only through the organizational culture as a media to indirect influence performance. Corresponding is that competitive and innovation of Cultural characteristics directly affect performance. 2 Influence corporate cultures on enterprise performance According to Kilman et al (1985) comment, there is three degree of impacts: (1) Cultural orientation, meaning that Cultural influence organizations operational direction correctively; (2) the permeability of culture, means the degree of consensus in the members of the organization for the culture. (3) Cultural strength means the degree of loyalty to culture by organizations members. Strong cultures have greater influence that means it has a wide range of permeability and far reaching impact on the strength of the entity. If the team member are provided with consistent targets and shared the same values, they will be satisfied with what they are doing and will be more focused with their tasks. However even if the culture of the organization is pointed in right direction but the members cannot understand or achieve it or be loyal to it, then this will be a weak culture with negative impact on the performance of the entity. Trice (1993) also indicates that a strong organizational culture also can reduce the cost of decision- making and make work specialization. Strong organizational culture has been recommended by Akin and Hopelain (1986) to the entire managers who wish to enhance their productivity or performance. The organization will receive great return from investments or marketing if they propagate culture and using it as the decision making tool. The organizations that do not propagate culture always get less return; it has been confirmed by Denison (1990). Regardless of companies strategy or culture being people or reliability or productivity orientated they all still compete for great profit and productivity. IBM CEO Tom Watson in 1962 delivered a speech at Columbia University, he said: related business operating performance, enterprises management thoughts, spirit and goals are much more important than technical resources, economic resources, enterprise structure, invention and random Decision. Of course, all these factors also greatly affect the performance of the business. But I think, all those factors are sourced from employees and how they extent of basic beliefs of enterprises ideas (Jack E. S. 2012). But at many enterprises, organizational culture has been viewed as subordinate, even they described it as companys slogan, they deem the organization culture is creating needless official documents and procedures, and organization culture cannot bring any value to the enterprise. Kets deVries and Miller (1986) argued that when the business face hardship due to factors that is beyond their control even the culture is not helpful and may affect the company s performance negatively. Some scholars have began to try or test the construction of culture-performance causal relationships, such as Peters and Waterman (1982) of excellent companies , all emphasize positive effect of organizational culture on organizational performance . All in all, comprehensive enterprise practices and scholars research results shows organizational culture is positive factor for enterprise to obtain the best performance, to make right decisions and also face and deal with external factors. Therefore, all the attention and practice researchers been that cultural pattern is commodity and culture and organizational performance are coupled (PetersWaterman 1982). Conclusion To sum up, in the 20 years of organizational culture research, great achievements have been made. Culture can be regarded not only as a Relative special management field; it can also create influence and change cultural reality. Although some scholars believe that thotre of lack of the organization turn the research category too widely, as if from soup to nuts (Alvesson, 1993)  ¼Ã…’This is mainly due to the organizational culture research lack of a clear Analysis framework and theory foundation for culture research orientation, which led to the blind man feels like results (Mirvis Sales, 1990). Therefore, this paper is based on the organizational culture of the evolution process. I have briefly reviewed and analysed the theoretical basis of organizational culture, and it link to enterprise performance. this paper discusses the organizational culture for the influence of so as to further study on culture as the foundation. The organizations of the future culture research must be around the competitive advantage it creates and maintains in wider and deeper level and strategic change, other factors such as technology innovation behaviour by combining research, for enterprises in the fierce competition process on top is a positive.

Uganda

1. What is the nature of OpenMRS and why was it developed? Why were US universities, US National Institute of Health (NIH) and US donors involved in developing this system? 2. What were the impacts of using OpenMRS in ISS Clinic? How did the healthcare system improve? 3. What were the problems encountered in using OpenMRS? Discuss the battle of forms and why there were disagreements about what forms to use. Make a distinction between research vs. clinical objectives, US researcher vs. local objectives. 4. Why the OpenMRS project is in danger of failure? Why did the clinicians at ISS clinic say that â€Å"we didn’t ask for it.It is your problem†? Why MOH and US researchers are at odds about the value of OpenMRS? 5. What can be learned from this experience when implementing IT projects in developing countries? Do culture and world politics have a role? Why? 1. The OpenMRS is an electronic medical record system (EMRS) that was developed to track of patients medical records across a variety of different countries to be used in different types of clinics. Having the software as open source also meant that the source code could be assessed by anyone and customized to fit their particular need.In the ISS Clinic in Uganda it was used for patients being treated for HIV/AIDS. The system was developed to replace paper records which would make the work of researchers and clinic workers easier. The EMRs was used to track patient progress and track the inventory of antiretroviral drugs. US donors were most interested in the system as it made the retrieving information on patients that is needed for their research on AIDS, antiretroviral treatment, and other disease research much more accessible. 2.The impact of using OpenMRS was that it had greater storage capacity than Microsoft excel and it could be customized for their own particular use. Using the new system clinicians were able to able spend less time reviewing patient data and more time with patients as w ell as reducing wait times. Since patients usually did not see the same clinic staff. The data also allowed them to analyze patient trends and reduce the instance of drug stock outs. They could also use the data base to generate random samples for new research studies. 3. The problem with the Open MRS system is that not everyone in the clinic was on board.Clinic workers generally thought of the system as more for the US researchers. Clinicians did not have much access to the system either as their primary tool was still paper forms. Another bump in the road was the Ministry of Health standardizing all forms for HIV clinics meant that ISS needed to redo their system to match the new forms, which also were lacking room the for the additional data needed for UCSF and MGH research. The Ministry of Health in Uganda was concerned with making the reporting of HIV treatment standard for all patients across all the different health platforms, public or private.For the US researchers they wan ted to include additional data for their various studies. Both the clinic and the researchers goal was to better and more efficiently treat the AIDS epidemic, however for the researchers they also needed to report back to their grant funders and publish studies in order to keep the program running. 4. The OpenMRS system was in danger of failure in 2010 because there was not enough financial support to cover the operational cost of the program. Funding was being stretched thinner and thinner and one of the clinics big grants was about to expire.The Ugandan Ministry of Health was also not willing to cover the gaps as they did not see the value in the system for their own objectives. The Clinicians didn’t see the immediate value of the system for themselves because they thought of it as a tool of the US researchers (US Researchers were the only ones publishing papers using the data) not thinking about how it’s effect on the day to day operations of the clinic. 5. I think that there is definitely a cultural element to the problem in developing support for the OpenMRS project. The US stakeholders seemed to come in and set up shop without any input from the local people or government.They thought that the government should automatically throw their support behind their efforts. The US stakeholders should have really engaged the local people more with the project, getting them more involved in developing the system and training them to use the system and showing clinicians why it is important for them. The Americans should have also gotten Ugandan researchers involved in using the system to publish their own papers. Having more of a local participation in the project and making it a collaborative effort would have made Ugandan government and workers see the system as their own.

Ethics and Corporate Responsibility in the Workplace and the World Essay

Ethics and corporate responsibility in the workplace and the world is becoming a center of attention. There are many things going on in the workplace that different agencies and people are looking into while placing the blame on the appropriate source. In this paper, a scenario is presented. The scenario involved PharmaCARE and its subsidiary, CompCARE are reviewed and certain questions are being asked for clarity. The paper will look at the stakeholders in this scenario. The paper will do it best to analyze the ethics of PharmaCARE’s treatment of the Colberia’s indigenous population and its rank-and –file workers versus that of its executives. In additionally, the paper will look at the situation concerning three workers, Donna, Tom, and Ayesha under the supervision of Allen. The study of how whistleblowing, opportunities, and protection could help Allen stop the unethical of CompCare. An assessment of PharmaCARE’s environmental creativity with the Colberian activities. The paper will address the original purpose of and changes to Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The paper will now look at the shareholders in this scenario. The shareholders are major players in an organization or corporation. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a â€Å"shareholder as one that holds or owns a share in a company† (Shareholder, 2013). A synonym of a shareholder is stakeholder and this is someone who has interest in the company. Therefore, the shareholders of this scenario are Allen, Donna, Ayesha, Tom, CompCARE, PharmaCARE, WellCo, and the Colberians. Allen, Donna, Ayesha, and Tom are employees of CompCARE. They are stakeholders in this scenario because they work for CompCARE and this is how they make their living. They want the company to be successful, but at what cost will it cost them. The Colberians are the people who labor to make the drug, while getting paid $1.00 a day and living in poverty. PharmaCARE is the mother company of CompCARE and its goal is to profit off of CompCARE by any means necessary. WellCo brought the  CompCARE from PharmaCARE seeing the profit it could make in this deal. Each shareholder plays a significant part in making sure the CompCARE is successful. The paper will now look analyze the ethics of PharmaCARE treatment of the Colberians. PharmaCARE has a company in African and found people there willing to share information about local remedies and could supply workers willing to work for $1.00 a day. PharmaCARE probably look at this as a coal mine and struck the deal. This process is unethical in every way. One reason it is unethical, the employees at PharmaCARE is not working for a $1.00 a day wage nor are they living in primitive huts. The employees of PharmaCARE have electricity and running water while the Colberians do not get to enjoy this luxury. The World Trade Organization, WTO established guidelines concerning labor rights and standards. â€Å"Moreover, precisely because third world workers are terribly exploited, their employees will pass on much of the cost of improvements in labor standards achieved through international trade treaties to their employees in the form of lower wages† (Global Issues, 2013). PharmaCARE knew the way it was treating the Colberians was not ethical; the company could not behave in this fashion in the United States. PharmaCARE teamed with some toxic leaders in fatting its profit margin. The welfare of the Colberians did not concern them in any way. Hellriegel and Slocum noted a concern for a global team. The global team would have benefited PharmaCARE tremendously. â€Å"The global team helps to define common features of goods and services that will appeal to customers in different countries. The global team members from different countries can provide insight into an input about these unique market needs and requirements for specific attributes of goods and services† (Hellrigel & Slocum, 2011, p.360). A company wants to be correct in dealing with foreigners because if anything is done wrong eventually the world will find out. In this scenario, the executives profit, while the workers receive scraps. The paper will now turn it focus on the workers insi de CompCARE and could termination be consider legal in this scenario. The workers are Allen, Ayesha, Donna, and Tom. Allen is the manager and was responsibility to make sure his staff was not in any health nor safety  threat. In the case with Ayesha, she wanted to be promoted and nothing happen. She filed a complaint with the EEOC. â€Å"The EEOC was created to increase job opportunities for women and minorities and to help end discrimination based on race, color, religion, disability, gender, or national origin in any personnel action† (Boone & Kurtz, 2012, p. 61). Allen could have avoided this by putting Ayesha on a supervisor track. Allen could have been a role model for Ayesha, while showing her the responsibility of a supervisor. Allen should have talked to Ayesha and giving her pointers on what she needed to do to be considered for a supervisor job. In the case of Donna, she never was one to stay out of work. She had a perfect attendance until the discovery of mold was found. She became ill because nothing was done to rectify the mold problem. Therefore, Allen do not have a just cause to fire Donna knowing the reason of her illness. She continued to work until she could no longer and filed for worker compensation. â€Å"Any employee, irrespective of their length of service, who is dismissed or subjected to a detriment for certain health and safety reasons, would have a potential claim against their employer† (Calcott, 2011, p.12). In the case of Tom, he wanted something done about the mold problem. Tom was a supervisor at CompCARE and he reported to Allen. Tom noticed how all the workers were getting sick and took action. He informed Allen about the sir quality in the lab. Tom did the right thing in reporting all problems to his superior. The assumed Tom waited and went to Allen again to do something about the air quality. The problem gotten worsen and Tom threatened to turn the company in to OSHA. Tom would be consider a whistleblower. â€Å"A whistleblower exposes the misdeeds of others in organizations† (Schermerhorn, 2010, p.100). The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 prohibits an employee from getting fired for telling on unethical conduct. The paper will now look at how Allen could have benefit by supporting his employees and himself. Allen knew something was not right and yet he did nothing when the problem was not fix. â€Å"Employers are well aware of their extensive responsibilities to employees under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974† (Calcott, 2011, p.12). In the role Allen have, he was obligated and held the responsibility to protect his staff. Allen reported to his boss as to what was going on, therefore he should took the next steps in finding help for his employees. Allen could have benefited himself by having a clear conscious he did what was right.  He would have been free from any prosecution the employees would have filed on the company. He would have been protected under the Whistleblower Act as well. Allen’s health was just as much danger as his staff and this should have been enough to make him tell authority. PharmaCARE’s renders a purported environmental stewardship is worst and the company’s public stance should carry an obligation to be a leader in environmental matters. PharmaCARE should be more concern about Colberians’ environment. PharmaCARE should want to help the people who is producing their product. They could help with building homes for the Colberians, by knowing their conditions. The executives live in nice places with running water and electricity. PharmaCARE can set up a fund in order to educate the people of Colberia. Teaching and showing people how to be more efficient will help PharmaCARE profit more. The people will be loyal to the company helping them. PharmaCARE can help the Colberians to be more productivity in everyday life. When a company goes in a foreign country to do business it should make sure of the country’s policy. Companies move their business to foreign countries are still liable if something happen. The company should be willing to help build the area up the workers live in. Building roadways to carry PharmaCARE’s drugs is a significant matter. The WTO is cutting down on companies that are no treating foreigners’ right. This is in health and safety as well as in the United States. The WTO is an advocate for under privilege countries. It protects the right of the workers in poverty countries. There seem to be a big issue regarding children workers but this does not seem the case. However, WTO will not allow any injustice to come to workers in third world countries. â€Å"The WTO’s agreements permit members to take measures to protect not only the environment but also public health, animal health and plant health. However, these measures must be applied in the same way to both national and foreign businesses. In other words, members must not use environmental protection measures as a means of disguising protectionist policies† (WTO, 2013). The author believes now things are getting better because companies know someone is watching them. The next concern to look at concerning this scenario is the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) à ¢â‚¬Å"is a liability scheme rather than a monitoring program† ( Halbert & Ingulli,  2012, p.207). According to the Environmental Protection Agency â€Å"the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) commonly known as Superfund, was enacted by Congress on December 11, 1980† (CERCLA, 2013). The CERCLA’s function were to assist others when a hazardous substances might endanger others or the environment. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act provided accountability of persons accountable for discharges of hazardous waste. It also established a trust fund to make available for cleanup when no guilty party could be acknowledged. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act do not support the PharmaCARE scenario. The PharmaCARE is a pharmaceutical company and CERCLA’s target is chemical and petroleum industries. CERCLA will assist when the responsibility people cannot be located. In this scenario the responsible party is known and could have done something about the matter before it got out of hand. The cleanup should fall on PharmaCARE and not CERCLA. There were signs and people to tell the story of what happen and how nothing was done to cease the problem. There were no transporters bringing the mold into the company. The mold grew and causing the air quality to be tamper with. PharmaCare is fully blame for this and should pay for the cleanup and compensate the workers on their health issues. PharmaCARE was bogus and should be made to buy back CompCARE from WellCo. WellCo is an innocent party while things were being withheld from the company. References Boone, G., & Kurtz, D. (2012). Contemporary Business (14th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Calcott, J. (2011). Don’t stumble over safety. Works Management, 64(8), 12 CERCLA. (2013). Retrieved August 18, 2013, from http://www.epa.gov/superfund/policy/cercla.html EEOC. Retrieved July 26, 2013from http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/internal/eeo_policy_statement.cfm Global Issues. (2013). Retrieved August 16, 2013, from http://www.globalissues.org Halbert, T., & Ingulli, E. (2012). Law & ethic in business environment (7th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning Shareholder. (2013). Retrieved August 16, 2013, from www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary Hellriegel, D., & Slocum, J., W. (2011). Organization Behavior. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning WTO. (2013). Retrieved August 18, 2013, from http://www.wto.org

Europasaurus - Facts and Figures

Name: Europasaurus (Greek for European lizard); pronounced your-ROPE-ah-SORE-us Habitat: Plains of western Europe Historical Period: Late Jurassic (155-150 million years ago) Size and Weight: About 10 feet long and 1,000-2,000 pounds Diet: Plants Distinguishing Characteristics: Unusually small size for a sauropod; quadrupedal posture; ridge on snout About Europasaurus Just as not all sauropods had long necks (witness the short-necked Brachytrachelopan), not all sauropods were the size of houses, either. When its numerous fossils were unearthed in Germany a few years ago, paleontologists were astonished to learn that the late Jurassic Europasaurus wasnt much bigger than a large ox--only about 10 feet long and one ton, max. This may seem large compared to a 200-pound human, but its positively stunted compared to classic sauropods like Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, which weighed in the neighborhood of 25 to 50 tons and were almost as long as a football field. Why was Europasaurus so small? We may never know for sure, but an analysis of Europasaurus bones shows that this dinosaur grew more slowly than other sauropods--which accounts for its small size, but also means that an unusually long-lived Europasaurus might have reached a respectable height (though it would still have seemed puny standing next to a full-grown Brachiosaurus). Since its clear that Europasaurus evolved from larger sauropod ancestors, the most likely explanation of its small size was an evolutionary adaptation to the limited resources of its ecosystem--perhaps a remote island cut off from the European mainland. This type of insular dwarfism has been observed not only in other dinosaurs, but also extant mammals and birds.