What Should You Know About Leadership?

The Values of Organizational Culture

The aforementioned thesis statement will examine the values that can be contributed to a company when its culture is carefully examined and a new one is adopted.

Impact of Organizational Culture on Employee Lives and Financial Success

According to (Alveson & Sveningson, 2008), organizational culture affects employees’ lives significantly and generally aids in a company’s success financially. In order to achieve internal integration and put the strategy of adaptation in place in the external environment, organizational culture is crucial. As a result, many businesses examine their organizational cultures, and when necessary, leaders work consciously to create, maintain, and alter those cultures. At every level of change, leadership plays distinct roles as it is the virtual duty of a leader to manage the people and make their efforts to be at their best in favor of change for an organization. Change management is an essential area of concentration for the healthy growth of any business, it is important even for the survival of any organization in today’s business world. Successful change in any organization is impossible without the active participation of management (Driskill & Brenton, 2005).

Distinct Roles of Leadership in Change Management

(Enickon & Terblanche, 2003) argues that, at every level of change, leadership plays distinct roles as it is the virtual duty of a leader to manage the people and make their efforts to be at their best in favor of change for an organization. Change management is an essential area of concentration for the healthy growth of any business, it is important even for the survival of any organization in today’s business world. Successful change in any organization is impossible without the active participation of management.

Impact of Organizational Culture on the Environment

Organizational culture has a big impact on an organization’s environment. The corporate culture plays a big part in the success of the business. Research has been done to discover what exactly makes an effective culture and how to change a culture that is not functioning as required. In most organizational, management uses experts to be able to learn the culture of individuals and understand their way of doing things and where to place them (Grint, 2009).

Successful Implementation of Culture Change

For successful culture change implementation, a lot of things must be done. First, trying to convince employees that the change will be a benefit to them, to the parties involved like suppliers, customers etc. Therefore, Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle that involves credibility (ethos), logic (logo) and emotion (pathos) must be used to analyze the change strategic plan.

Appeal to Ethics and Credibility (Ethos)

Ethos is the appeal to ethics and it is a means of convincing someone of the character or credibility of the persuader. It is the responsibility of the top management to explain to the parties involved that the culture change plan will bring nothing but the best results and benefits to them and the organization at large. For this to pass, the management must be trusted by the parties and the style of execution must be exclusive to be able to capture the interests of the parties involved.

Appeal to Emotion (Pathos)

Pathos is the appeal to emotion and is a way of convincing the audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. It is said that for someone to do his/her work to perfection, they must embrace the work and love it. This is a very important part of management, they must emotionally connect with the audience and try understanding them from their point of view. By this doing, the management will know where to work on to ensure that the audience changes its mind and love the idea of changing the organizational culture. For this to happen, the audience must be taken through seminars and training. Where they can fully understand the importance of the changes to be implemented, the benefits that come with the change and many more. But most importantly, it is for the audience to appreciate the top management for trying to improve the performance and the relationship between colleagues and thereafter embracing the changes.

Appeal to Logic (Logos)

Logos is the appeal to logic and it is a way of persuading an audience by reason. With a working environment where everyone is literate, logic is the best method to be used to try convincing the audience of the benefits of changing the environmental culture. When using logos, it is important for the top management to use evidence. That is cases that have happened before. The logic that, with a successfully implemented culture change plan, the environment in the organization will improve. This can be achieved by using case studies, the reasoning of the benefits and facts.

The Toulmin Model

Toulmin model: The 12th-century British philosopher Stephen Toulmin noticed that good, realistic arguments typically will consist of six parts. He used these terms to describe the items.

Data

Data: This is basically the evidence used to prove an argument. In our case, when we want to change the culture of an organization, the management has to provide the negativity of the previous culture and what harm it brings to the organization. For example, low production or efficiency, low profitability, non-loyal customers, theft among employees from the organization and many more. When such evidence is provided it becomes an eye-opener to the parties involved and the idea of culture change becomes interesting to them.

Claim

Claim: This means statement being argued (a thesis). In our case, the statement would be culture change to improve the productivity and the relationship between colleagues. Since management is responsible for change and comes up with the change strategy themselves, it is important when they come up with a statement that explains their intention.

Warrants

Warrants: The general, hypothetical (and often implicit) logical statements that serve as bridges between the claim and the data. When changing the organization’s culture, it is advised to give the importance of changing the culture. When making changes for the better good. Therefore, management should explain or list the advantages that will emerge through the strategic change. For example, by changing the machinery of production, we will be able to improve efficiency and improve the volume of units produced

Qualifiers

Qualifiers: These are statements that limit the strength of the argument or statements that propose the conditions under which the argument is true. In our case, such statements include, the Improved culture will shape employees, ensure good relations and respect for managers and employees. It will improve customer service, after-sales services, and loyalty of customers.

Rebuttals

Rebuttals: These are counter-arguments or statements indicating circumstances when the general argument does not hold true. From our thesis argument, we can say that culture is not about leadership but individuals. Culture does not affect productivity or customer loyalty, but individual employees do. This is to explain that; all human beings have different personalities and it is through them that we can handle tasks differently. Thus, culture is about ethics. More so, a company can have certain core values that are not followed by anyone even the management that formulate them, but they are made just because a company should have them.

Backing

Backing: Statements that serve to support the warrants. In the thesis statement provided, our backing can be; the relationship between culture and change is intertwined and without leadership, it is difficult to successfully implement change. Therefore, leaders should be quality leaders who are not self-centered and want the best for the company and the employees at large.

REFERENCES

Alveson, M., & Sveningson, S. (2008). Changing Organizational Culture: Cultural change work in progress. New York: Routledge.

Driskill, G., & Brenton, A. (2005). Organizational culture in action: a cultural analysis workbook. Canada: Sage Publications.

Enickon, M., & Terblanche, F. (2003). Building organizational culture that stimulates creativity and innovation. European Journal of Innovation Management, 64-74.

Grint, K. (2009). What is Leadership? . Oxford University, 10-13