Examining Tribal and Procedure-Based Organizational Cultures

Tribal Organizational Culture vs. Procedures and Training Organizational Culture Organizational culture is a term that is used to refer to the climate and practices developed by organizations around handling of people within the organization. This concept has received considerable attention among academics and practitioners in business management. The increased attention on the concept has been accompanied by encouraging managers to attempt creating strong organizational cultures as part of a vital trend in managerial thinking. This significant trend is influenced by the fact that leadership and organizational culture are conceptually interconnected.

Organizational leaders and managers are increasingly faced with the need to establish strong organizational cultures in order to help the organization achieve its respective business goals and objectives. This emphasis on this concept has resulted in the emergence of different types of organizational cultures such as tribal organizational cultures and procedures and training organizational cultures, which have certain similarities and differences.

Tribal Culture and Procedure-based Organizations As previously mentioned, tribal organizational culture and procedure and training organizational culture are examples of organizational cultures that are used in different organizations and vary significantly despite having some similarities. Generally, tribal culture refers to an organizational climate and practices that are not based on certain procedures or guidelines. Tribal culture organizations basically entail verbal or written delegation of knowledge from one employee to another (Dew, n.d.).

In this case, minimal information is formally established in processes and there may be lack of well-established standards on conducting the work. As a result, every worker performs the specific tasks and functions based on their instructions he/she received as well as any other particular improvements that he/she decides to include. In contrast, procedures or training organizations are characterized by procedures, which play a significant role in protecting against health and safety issues, quality, and environmental problems.

The significance of procedures in such an organizational culture is influenced by the fact that individuals usually learn and are reminded to conduct certain activities through procedures. Organizations that utilize procedures do because people need to be reminded to accomplish certain tasks because of the vulnerability of human memory to mistakes. When procedures for conducting a task are absent, education and/or training is used as a means of helping and reminding individuals to perform a task.

A process-based organizational culture helps organization to scale or promote exponential revenue growth while adding resources linearly (Proctor, 2014). Similarities between these Organizational Cultures Despite the obvious differences between tribal and procedure-based organizational cultures, there are certain similarities between them. First, these organizational cultures have considerable effects on the interactions between people and groups as well as with other stakeholders. As previously mentioned, organizational culture has a considerable impact on the behaviors of people within the organization.

The impact of these organizational cultures on people's behaviors originates from its representation of beliefs, principles, and values of organizational members. These principles, values, and beliefs in turn act as the basis for defining and establishing collective appropriate behavior within the organization. Secondly, these organizational cultures are similar with regards to the fact that workers' behaviors and performance of tasks is influenced by knowledge.

While they have different means of passing down the knowledge, the effectiveness of the organizational cultures in contributing towards realization of organizational goals is based on knowledge. Knowledge plays an important role in influencing and determining cultural norms and how the job is performed. Moreover, there is a general assumption that these workers know their respective functions or tasks. Third, similar to procedure-based organizations, organizational climate and patterns in tribal organizations is established by the management.

Generally, managers or organizational leaders create and sustain the organizational culture depending on the various issues in the working environment. Differences between these Organizational Cultures While tribal and procedure-based organizational cultures have some similarities, there are numerous differences between them. First, these organizational cultures differ with regards to knowledge since individuals own knowledge regarding work procedures in tribal culture whereas procedure-based cultures involve sharing knowledge that is owned by everyone.

In addition, tribal cultures involve informal collection and retaining of knowledge in personal notes while procedure-based organization involves formal collection and retaining knowledge in procedures. Secondly, while procedure-based organizations develop and manage business processes, tribal organizational cultures design and manage respective job tasks (Hernaus, 2008). Third, people in tribal organizational cultures ignore irregular incidents while irregular events are regarded as probable problems in procedure-based organizations. As a result, procedure-based organizations use condition reporting if problems occur while tribal organizations rely on informal work-arounds in case.