Business strategy Assignment: 4

Section: B
TOPIC: Integrating strategy and culture
Name: Registration no:
Umair Tariq L1F17BBAM0054

Ali butt L1F17BBAM0055

Bakhtawar Mina L1F15BBAM0154

Amna Sultan L1F15BBAM0193

Supervisor:
Prof. Abdul Waheed
Integrating Strategy and Culture:
Every organization have its own culture and way of working in industry. Planning
and implementation of Strategies is dependent on culture of organization.
Organizational culture may be defined as a system of assumptions, values, norms
and attitudes manifested through symbols, which the members of an organization have
developed and adopted through mutual experience and which help them to determine the
meaning of the world surrounding them and how to behave in it. From the definition, it
can be concluded that organizational culture consists of collective cognitive structures,
such as assumptions, values, norms and attitudes, but also of symbols which materialize
and manifest its cognitive content. Also, it consequently follows that organizational
culture is a result of social interaction of the members of organization which takes place
during solving of the problem of external adaptation of an enterprise to the environment
and internal integration of the collective. The successful solutions to these problems are
generalized, systematized, pushed into the sub consciousness of the members of
organization, and thus converted into collective cognitive structures shared by all or most
of the employees
Organizational culture captures the subtle, elusive, and largely unconscious forcesthat
shape a workplace. Remarkably resistant to change, culture can represent a major
strength or weakness for the firm. It can be an underlying reason for strengths or
weaknesses in any of the major business functions.

Cultural products includes values, beliefs, rites, rituals, ceremonies, myths, stories,
legends, sagas, language, metaphors, symbols, folktales, and heroes and heroines and
many other things.
These products or dimensions are levers that strategists can use to influence and direct
strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation activities. An
organization’s culture. Compares to an individual’s personality in the sense that no
two organizations have the same culture and no two individuals have the same
personality. Both culture and personality are fairly enduring and can be warm,
aggressive, friendly, open, innovative, conservative, liberal, harsh or likable.
Many international organizations have informal culture like Facebook and Apple both of
these companies have international reputation and these companies’ heir employees from
all around the world. So these type of organization developed their own culture in
industry
As Amazon has a very intensive corporate culture with an extensive emotional and even
physical pressure to some employees.  Nevertheless, the tech giant has replaced Google
as the best place to work in US, according to LinkedIn. This can be explained in a way
that Amazon has a unique organizational culture that is not for everyone. Only employees
who can thrive under immense pressure and fast-paced environment can survive in this
company.

Examples of Cultural Products

There are some examples for cultural products.
 Rites:
In rites people follow some religious events and activities. For example In muslim
countries Ramadan is associated for large number of religious activities.
 Ceremonies:
These are the special events for some reason like marriage ceremony is a great
cultural event in Pakistan.
 Rituals:
A religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed
according to a prescribed order. Like Muslims performed Hajj and Umraah.Hindu
celebrate Holli, Diwali
 Myths:
These are unusual activities performed by some group of people.
 Sagas:
Some historical events and narration drive human behavior like Heer and Ranjha
story.
 Legends;
There could be any special personality to motivate people for work. For example
in Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam is a great leader for American’s Abraham Lincon could
be motivation.
  Stories:
Some narrated stories drives mood and action like story of Zaheer ud din Babar.
Sub-continent story.
 Folktales;
Some stories that’s are not real but remain a part of our life like story of farmer
and his three sons.
 Symbols:
Symbols are very important in organizational culture. Thumbs up signal is a
symbol of good in Europe and it is bad in Australian culture.
 Language:
Some language ascents are very loud and noisy.
 Values:
the most important part of culture is value by that people give respect and honor to
anyone. In Pakistani culture people give honor to old people.
 Beliefs;
Many people have different believes and reaction to any work.

Organizational culture influences strategy in both the process of its formulation, as well
as in the process of its implementation. Organizational culture influences strategy
formulation by shaping the interpretative schemes and meanings which strategic
decisions makers assign to the occurrences within and outside of the company
Culture determines the way in which top management gathers information, the way in
which they perceive and interpret the environment and the company resources, but it also
influences the way in which they make strategic decisions, i.e. make the strategy
selection. Organizational culture influences strategy implementation by legitimizing or
delegitimizing the strategy, depending on the consistency between cultural values and the
selected strategy.
When culture legitimizes strategy, it significantly facilitates strategy implementation,
and when culture delegitimizes strategy in the view of employees and managers, it makes
the implementation of the selected strategy almost impossible. Strategy influences
organizational culture by institutionalizing or deinstitutionalizing the culture, depending
on the conformity with cultural values and norms. If activities through which the selected
strategy is operationalized and implemented are in conformity with cultural values and
norms, the strategy will institutionalize and strengthen the existing culture. Conversely,
long-lasting and consistent implementation of the selected strategy will deinstitutionalize
organizational culture, whereby the process of its change begins