Organizational Culture Improvement

Introduction

“HRM systems can influence perceptions of organizational climate,” which, in its turn, is correlated with the extent to which employees engage in various corporate endeavors (Albrecht, Bakker, Gruman, Macey, & Saks, 2015, p. 9). When speaking of service quality improvement initiatives, their success will also largely depend on attitudinal, behavioral, performance, and financial outcomes of individuals within the company. Thus, the evaluation of the internal organizational environment, structures, and practices are essential.

Likely Contributing Factors

Customer-oriented corporate philosophy and politics largely influence employees’ commitment to service quality improvement. Overall, culture as a complex of shared customer focus values within the company provides managers with a favorable environment in which the implementation of strategies becomes feasible. At the same time, knowledge management can be regarded as a cohesive element between actual performance, motives, and perceptions of functions and responsibilities in employees (Niu & Fan, 2015). When appropriate values and standards are equally distributed across all organizational levels, the company succeeds in the development of desirable professional behaviors that ultimately result in the attainment of greater customer satisfaction and excellent quality of service.

Considering this, we may identify the following factors that may likely create barriers to quality improvement. They are as follows:

• the absence of ethical standards,
• poorly developed employee motivation system,
• noncompliance with the principle of customer focus,
• inadequate knowledge management,
• lack of managerial support.

Key Action Steps

Collaboration with the Leadership in order to Revise Organizational Values

Organizational culture, leaders’ commitment, and the overall orientation to stakeholders’ needs and interests are key critical factors of quality initiatives. Through the creation and conceptualization of values, managers can determine the fashion of organizational interactions with consumers and partners, and ensure a high level of stakeholders’ engagement. The stakeholder theory suggests that the consideration of broad social and ethical values is beneficial for companies’ profitability and sustainability (Vidal, Berman, &Van Buren, 2015). Thus, the CHRO should encourage leaders to stimulate customer-oriented behavior through the integration of relevant values into the corporate culture.

Coordination of Employee Motivation System with Quality Initiatives

An efficient reinforcement system can promote desirable behavior in employees. To make it work, managers should consider organizational goals and patterns of feedback and find ways to correlate them in practice. They must also emphasize individual responsibility and orient employees to achieve positive results through the initiation of a reward and recognition system that would demonstrate subordinates that their efforts are valued (Albrecht et al., 2015). Managers should identify what type of activities and outcomes can be additionally rewarded. Moreover, they need to determine other factors that may prevent subordinates from being on good terms with customers, e.g. time unavailability and excess workload. The assessment results may reveal that the company needs to improve the work structure to generate opportunities for favorable employee behavior.

Develop a Training Program and Enhance Employee Communication

Knowledge management, employee education, and communication may be considered the main contributing factors to the improvement of organizational culture. Through the establishment of open communication with subordinates at meetings, managers may increase team cohesion and introduce high standards of conduct, as well as professional and ethical values (Negin, 2013). Communication and education should go hand in hand. The bilateral information flow may facilitate the shift to favorable change. Not only should employees be instructed on principles of conduct, customer focus, ethics, etc., but must be provided with an opportunity to seek feedback and fill existing gaps in knowledge and, in this way, reduce excess uncertainty.

References

Albrecht, S. L., Bakker, A. B., Gruman, J. A., Macey, W. H., & Saks, A. M. (2015). Employee engagement, human resource management practices and competitive advantage. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 2(1), 7-35. doi:10.1108/joepp-08-2014-0042

Negin, M. (2013). Study the relationship between managers’ communication skills and staffs organizational commitment. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 5(5), 198.

Niu, R., & Fan, Y. (2015). An in-depth investigation on quality management practices in China. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 32(7), 736-753.

Vidal, N.G., Berman, S., & Van Buren, H. (2015). Stakeholder theory and value creation models in Brazilian firms. Revista Brasileira de Gestão de Negócios, 17(55), 911-931.