Impact of Culture on an Organization’s Ability to Effectively Manage and Share Information

One of the best measures of organizational success is how it uses its culture to gain positive outcomes at every level of the organization from management, communication, managing change, and all other aspects that complete corporate culture. Caruso (2017) defines organizational culture as all underlying values, means of interactions, beliefs, and assumptions that contribute to defining the inner workings of an organization. Organizational culture points to the internal behavior and values within a company including experiences, expectations, and ways of thinking. All of these aspects create intuitive emotional responses and repetitive habits that can be identified to a certain organization. A major part of organizational culture is embedded in how it manages communication, and especially information sharing. Information sharing is described by Yang and Maxwell (2011) as the exchange of information between different parties in an organization. Information shared includes all data that may influence or affect a decision or how a policy is made. There is a positive relationship between a good organizational culture and the ability of an organization to effectively manage and share information.

Organizational culture influences how information sharing occurs in regard to the chain of command and forms of communication adopted within an organization. It affects information management, the collecting, storing, curating, disseminating, archiving, and possible destruction of all sources of information relevant to an organization (Prajogo et al., 2018). The impact of a positive culture is that it allows an organization to have positive information sharing and information management approaches, in a way that dictates how strategies, policies, and processes are implemented for both short term and long term decisions. Impact, according to Chang, Liao, and Wu (2017), is the influence or effect of a variable to different stakeholders. Impact of a culture, therefore, looks at how information sharing and management are influenced, their outcomes, or effect and whether the organizational culture causes the processes to be better or poorer.

In conclusion, safe and open organizational cultures with a flat corporate hierarchy encourage communication and better information sharing. Ultimately, the availability of information means that managers and other decision makers are better informed in their roles as policy and process implementers. It also means that they are able to manage information better for the benefit of an organization. Organizational culture has a hold on all of the main pillars of the organization including communication, information systems, information sharing and management, change management, and the adoption and implementation of policies and processes. Information is required at a frequent and reliable rate for decisions to be made with certainty and for an organization to be able to effectively manage information in a way that brings positive outcomes to an organization. In an organization where different management levels are information-starved, the process of making decisions is greatly hampered. The direct consequence is that critical day to day decisions are not made with the pace that is required to compete with other organizations in a fast-paced world. Therefore, the organizational culture must be safe, open, and positive to support information sharing for there to be effective information sharing and management, and for the impact of these actions to be positive.

References

Caruso, S.J., 2017. A foundation for understanding knowledge sharing: Organizational culture, informal workplace learning, performance support, and knowledge management. Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 10(1), p.45.

Chang, W.J., Liao, S.H. and Wu, T.T., 2017. Relationships among organizational culture, knowledge sharing, and innovation capability: a case of the automobile industry in Taiwan. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 15(3), pp.471-490.

Prajogo, D., Toy, J., Bhattacharya, A., Oke, A. and Cheng, T.C.E., 2018. The relationships between information management, process management and operational performance: Internal and external contexts. International Journal of Production Economics, 199, pp.95-103.

Yang, T.M. and Maxwell, T.A., 2011. Information-sharing in public organizations: A literature review of interpersonal, intra-organizational and inter-organizational success factors. Government information quarterly, 28(2), pp.164-175.