ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE: AN INDEPENDENT OR MODERATING VARIABLE?

ABSTRACT Organizational culture is seen as an organization specific system of widely shared values and assumptions that give rise to typical behavior patterns. Organizations as a living entities created by mankind through their artifacts and assumptions have a culture of their own. Therefore, it becomes imperative to understand the dynamics of organizational culture. The paper aims to review the important articles and theories in the field of organizational culture by studying important researches done by great thinkers and academicians. It reviews the cross cultural differences in organizational practices identified in various studies. It studies role of organisational culture as both independent and moderating variable in an organisation. It is seen that organisational culture has an impact on organisational performance and can prove to be a source of competitive advantage if rare, non imitable and valuable culture is sustained by the organisation. But it is important to note that with the advent of globalization and companies crossing border, culture has become extremely fluid in nature. Therefore, organisations must adapt to this rise in new cultural community emerging in global businesses and accept this cross-verging of culture across the globe.