Running head: Leaders and Organizational Culture.
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Leaders and Organizational Culture
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There are many definitions of organizational culture. The most basic definition is an organization’s shared values, attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions on how members of the organization should behave which gives meaning to how the organization functions. Organizational culture should enhance performance, internal integration, and bring all staff of all levels together. For this to happen, it is the role of management to foster this type of organizational culture. In my opinion, the basic characteristics or responsibilities of leaders help to maintain a healthy organizational culture. These characteristics include but are not limited to being able to foster communication throughout the organization, build trust within the organization, inspire and motivate staff to work for the organization’s vision, and be able to lead and follow which go hand in hand with the traits of a healthy organizational culture.
To understand what roles and responsibilities leaders have on maintaining organizational culture, it is needed to look at the traits of healthy organizational culture. The Institute for Business Technology and Ethics suggests there are eight traits of a healthy organizational culture. These traits are openness and humility from top to bottom of the organization, environment of accountability and personal responsibility, freedom for risk taking, commitment to doing things right, integrity and consistency, collaboration, and courage.
Openness and humility in the organization means being able to ask for help and willing to learn from others. As ...