Definitions.
The organizational culture is a subject which came in to discussion most recently. We found that many definitions were given by many authors, scholars and researchers where most of them has come in to a conclusion that this refers to a system of values, beliefs & behavior shared among employees. The definition given by Schein, (2004) is considered as the most famous and the succinct one which defines the organizational culture as a pattern of basic assumptions that a group has invented or located in learning to cope with its external adaptation and internal integration problems and that have performed well enough to be considered true and therefore to be taught to new members as the right way to view, think and feel these problems.
Reichers and Schneider, (1990) argued that the culture of the organization is as a product of a formal and informal exchange of rules, activities and procedures. Moreover, Organizational culture is a set of values, symbols and behaviors shared by members of a particular corporation that explains how things are done in an organization to address both internal and customer-related management problems, suppliers and the environment (Calver et al, 2001).
Features of organizational culture.
As Simsek and Fidan, (2005) showed there are three main features of organizational culture which define the subject well in many definitions.
1. Values shared by individuals - This is about that the employees have common values about the good and bad or what behaviors are desired or undesirable. In other words this explains how people should behave in the organization.
2. Acceptance of the values - These values are not mentioned anywhere. Not written in a book or not providing as training or whatever. These has to be developed by employees themselves as composed of ideas and beliefs.
3. Symbolic meanings of the values for employees - This is where the learning through the interaction between people within the organization.
In Banking sector ?
In Banks in Sri Lanka, the current market is developing with a customer service oriented environment where all Banks are focusing on gaining the competitive advantage in serving their customers with an outstanding service. Before the private Banks come in to play, the state banks maintained a different organizational culture where the customers were not treated as the key element of their business. But, the banks in the private sector implemented a culture in their organizations where its customers always receive a better service and that made a revolutionary change in the banking sector.
Implementing a customer service oriented background is not an easy task as the organizations are occupied with different set of employees with different ideas and attitudes. Its a challenging task for the employer to develop a such culture, but mainly through the job satisfaction, the values can be implemented in favor of a better customer service. Job satisfaction is mainly describing the employee's feeling about their job. A productive working environment can construct a particular organizational culture and the experience of employees' job satisfaction (Schneider and Synder, 1975). Robbins, (1993) emphasized that since the dimensions of job satisfaction can be identified as organizational components hence the job satisfaction is an evaluation of organizational culture.
Job satisfaction as a motive for implementing an organizational culture focusing a better customer service.
In general, we can identify that Bank employees are quite satisfied with their work as better working conditions are available most of the time in their organizations. But some times employees are less satisfied with their remuneration & the promotion opportunities offered by the organization (Belias et al, 2015). Even though these kind of negative motives are there, employees are still engaging in achieving their objectives in a positive manner since the other working conditions such as social recognition, financial & non-financial benefits, better professional working environment, technological development & etc of the organization can be motivated them. Accordingly, the leaders were able to gain the advantage of this and built up an organizational culture which can drives the bank towards a better customer service.
References
Belias, D. et al. (2015) ‘Organizational Culture and Job Satisfaction of Greek Banking Institutions’, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier B.V., 175, pp. 314–323. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1206.
Claver, E., Llopis, J., González, M. R., & Gascó, J. L. (2001) The performance of information systems through organizational culture. Information Technology & People, 14(3), 247-260.
Reichers, A. E., & Schneider, B. (1990) Climate and culture: An evolution of constructs. Organizational climate and culture, 1, 5-39.
Robbins, S.P. 1993 (Cited in Belias D. et al, 2015). Organizational behaviour, concepts, controversies and applications. (6th Ed.). Englewood Cliffs.vNew Jersey: PrenticeHall.
Schneider, B & Snyder, R.A. 1975 (Cited in Belias D. et al, 2015). Some relationship between job satisfaction and organizational climate. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60(3), 318−328.
Schein, E.H. (2004) Organizational culture and Leadership, 3rd Edn. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.
Şimşek, N., & Fidan, M. 2005 (Cited in Elagoz I et al, no date) Corporate culture and leadership. Tablet Bookstore, Konya.
