The Environment and Corporate Culture

We will speak about internal and external organizational environments. Events in the external environment are considered important influences on organizational behavior and performance. The external environment consists of two layers:

• The task environment: it includes customers, competitors, suppliers, and the labor market.
• The general environment: it includes technological, sociocultural, economic, legal-political, and international dimensions.

Management techniques for helping the organization adapt to the environment include boundary-spanning roles, inter organizational partnerships, and mergers and joint ventures.
A major internal element for helping organizations adapt to the environment is culture. Corporate culture is a major element of the internal organizational environment and includes the key values, beliefs, understandings, and norms, that organization member share. Organizational activities that illustrate corporate culture include symbols, stories, heroes, slogans, and ceremonies. For the organization to be effective, corporate, culture should be aligned with organizational strategy and the needs of the external environment. Four type of culture are adaptability, achievement, involvement, and consistency. Strong cultures are effective when they enable an organization to meet strategic goals and adapt to changes in the external environment. Culture is important because it can have a significant impact on organizational performance. Managers emphasize values and business results to create a high-performance culture, enabling the organization to achieve consistent business performance through the actions of motivated employees who are aligned with the mission and goals of the company. Managers create and sustain adaptive high-performance cultures through cultural leadership. They define and articulate important values tied to a clear and compelling mission, and they widely communicate and uphold the values through their words and particularly their actions. Work procedures, budgeting, decision making, rewards systems, and other daily activities are aligned with the cultural values.

In the opening challenge, Kathleen Wehner became president of cirrus aviation after her husband's death. After 9/11, the business almost went bankrupt because no one was flying and, therefore, buying their space parts. With only two weeks of operating capital left, Wehner decided to keep the company going, to make adjustments, to remark business. Her sons and general manager Carmine Carviello helped as she shifted Cirrus's target market from large -engine airplanes toward small-engine and prop planes. She learned to research, finding out how to import plan engines from South America. She got the bank to give her a new line of credit and updated the company in regards to FAA regulations. She opened a plane repair shop in Arizona. Sales are up, last year at $4 million. Her family and friends, as well as the old boy aviation world (of which she is now a part) think she is quite remarkable. Not ready to stop her learning, Wenher says, "I'm a work in progress"