When in a work environment, the dominant culture articulates the core values shared by a majority of an organization’s members.
(Baack, 2012). The dominant culture is visible to the public when the organization interacts with the public. A subculture is created within a company as it begins to grow and develop. As Baack stated, “A subculture (a culture that differentiates a subgroup from the larger group to which it belongs), in an organizational context, arises from the common problems, situations, and experiences that a set of members face. (Baack, 2012).It is important to understand the impact of culture in an organizational setting so an employee can share and uphold the organization’s values.
A company with a strong culture employs members who intensely hold and readily share the organization's core values. (Baack, 2012). As the culture is understood and promoted in an organization, the organization can distinguish themselves among other organizations and create and sense of identity among the employees.At my last company, I think the awareness of a cultural difference was between the application support group and support engineers. The application support people dealt with the customers while the support engineers were behind the scenes.
I believe it was more of a negative culture that the support engineers promoted because they would tend to think the application support group and the customers were usually wrong. The negative culture was one reason I left because the attitude of the veterans of the company was difficult to change.The culture was not very flexible or adaptable to change. I believe if the veterans of the company realized the diverse background of the company and learned that sometimes different cultures and beliefs can bring good ideas, the company could grow exponentially. As Baack wrote, “companies that embrace diversity often reach wider audiences with products and services, benefit from innovative ideas from untapped members of society, and perform a social good. ”
