Explain similarities and differences in the organizational cultures of Term Paper

Explain similarities and differences in the organizational cultures of any two of the organizations listed below - Term Paper Example An organizational culture also consists of specific customs and traditions that have been passed on through the employees. Many companies encourage the use of historical stories and events to relate the company’s strong culture and how its people are its biggest asset. Slogans, taglines and symbols can also be categorized as part of the organizational culture; many employees will draw motivational forces from these objects and improve their productivity. IBM and Toshiba are two of the well-known computer manufacturers who have their own organizational culture present in their company. Each of them has specific strengths and weaknesses which they have overcome through the efforts of their employees. Although many people believe that since they are competitive companies, their cultures and norms will be more of less the same, however this is not the case. For simplicity, we have carried out a research of the companies based on their head-office culture which gives the most accur ate description of the type of culture the original creators wanted. With the advent of globalization, this activity has become increasingly difficult, however some aspects are more clearly visible then others. What we have seen is that there are both similarities and differences in the cultures and both have their impact on the workings of the company, and while some have positive effects, others may prove to be disastrous. Introduction An organization is always affected by the culture it has. Culture can be defined as beliefs, behavior, language, and way of life for a particular group of people or a certain time. The importance of having a uniform culture throughout the company cannot be emphasized enough. In 1992, John Kotter and James Heskett published Corporate Culture and Performance, a landmark study of more than 200 US companies. They concluded that over time, organizations that managed their staff well saw their share prices increase more than 10 times higher than organizat ions that did not. In this article, we will be discussing the organization cultures of two large multinational companies which deal with the manufacture and distribution of laptops, computers, servers and other computer hardware devices. The companies are IBM and Toshiba. About the Companies IBM’s roots can be traced back to the year 1911 and has ever since been dominant in the IT business. While they remained competitive in some product categories, they failed in others. However, they remained true to their culture and this is the reason why they have remained a prominent player in the industry for so many years (Lesser & Prusak, 2004). Toshiba on the other hand, was started in the year 1939. Toshiba has always remained a competitive firm in the computer industry; however it has never missed out on opportunities in the electronics industry. Throughout its history, the group responsible for Toshiba expanded strongly, both by internal growth and by acquisitions, buying heavy e ngineering and primary industry firms in the 1940s and 1950s and then spinning off subsidiaries in the 1970s and beyond. They maintained its integrity and its strong culture. Some have attributed this strong culture as the backbone of its success. Some experts however say that it will be this culture that may lead to its eventual downfall; this argument is debatable and is out of the scope of this paper. What we must understand is that for a comparative analysis we must set a few parameters. For our purposes we will be discus