Organizational Development

Organizational development has become a field of its own in business schools. It has drawn leadership research from the fields of psychology, law, business and sociology. The globalization of business processes such as cross border trade, investments and migration, have caused people, organizations and countries from different nations to interact. Organizations are interdependent, tied to others by their work, technology and business processes. This increased integration of the world has profound effects on both the leader and culture of an organization.

In team paper 1, we researched and defined managerial leader competencies; if learned and applied would increase the effectiveness of the organization. Team paper 1 provided us a clearer understanding of what a good leader is and what a leader should be. We also heard different proposals from the other teams in class on what leaders should be and do. The four teams produced a varying list of core competencies or traits (as one team called them) that effective managerial leaders should exhibit. That being said- we recognize that, for team paper 2, organizational culture will be a complicated topic to study.

Before we explore our objectives for this paper, we have to first understand what organizational culture is and its connection to effective managerial leadership.

Figure 1 Categories of Culture (Schein, 2009)

Schulz defined "culture is to organizations as what personality is to an individual, it defines who they are". Culture makes it possible for people to know just how to act to support the organization or group they are in. These social actions- "the way we do things around here" develop into patterns that become stable (Management Quarterly, 2001). Culture is created, embedded, evolved and manipulated by its founder or leader. Organizational culture supplies the organization the language and the social order or rules the organization will abide by. These dynamic processes of culture creation and management are the essence of leadership (Schein, 2009).

Although culture is created and manipulated by its founder or leader it is also dynamic and is shaped by the interaction of surrounding influences. As depicted in Figure 1, organizational culture can best be understood by dissecting the many surrounding layers. It is impossible to ignore the impact of government, ethnic and religious influences on the behaviors and values of an organization. American businesses functioning in China and Saudi Arabia behave differently from those American businesses functioning in the United States, and vice versa. The level of collaboration between men and women in the workplace are defined differently in Islamic countries and other Asian countries compared to its European and American counterpart. How organizations behave, perceive, feel and act in a given

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