Ever wonder why some organizations are super-performers and some cannot even reach a sustainable level? If you are thinking that the "super-successful" organizations excel because of their technological competence or financial soundness, think again!
In the recent decades, organizations have witnessed the erosion of traditional tall organizational structures and hierarchies, and various practices have also become obsolete. Conventionally, organizations competed on their functional strategies and tried to revamp and leverage their competitive advantage to carry on in the marketplace. However, organizations in today's dynamic markets have begun to look beyond industrial economics-based notions of strategy to try to better understand how they can sustain their competitive advantage.
A key aspect in a high performing organizational culture is personal responsibility. In high performing organizational cultures, employees have a sense of personal responsibility for understanding and staying current with external trends in the environment. Being personally responsible makes individuals adhere to their commitments, come what may.
High performing organization cultures allow immense coordination and involvement amongst all levels of employees and management, and unions too. Such a culture would demand innovation and creativity from the employees' behalf. Ichniowski et. al. (1996) elaborate on why organizations that adopt "innovative" work practices may be more productive, leading workers to work more efficiently. An important impediment in the creation of high performance workplaces is that the existing culture may impede a new culture to be implemented. For example, traditional bureaucratic organizations would have a problem in empowering their employees or have a participative style of processing. |
