Managing culture within organisation: Event industry

Introduction:

In the present era of globalization, more and more companies are seeking to become multinational. These companies tend to face lots of cross-cultural issues as they tend to operate in different countries with people from diverse background.”The concept of culture has principally stemmed from the study of ethnic and national differences in the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and social psychology” (Wilson, A.M., n.d., p.354). Culture is to any organisation is what skeleton is to human body. It is the layer underneath every purpose of the organisation like rewards, objectives etc. (Schneider, 1988, p. 353).With the ever changing economy the culture of a company also changes simultaneously.

The environment within a company can be called corporate culture. It is dependent on all the influential factors in an organization. Its core values, the personality traits of its employees frame the corporate culture. This also helps in forming the strategies of the company. The foremost focal point of these companies therefore becomes to resolve these cross-cultural issues, which can hinder their growth in the long run. There is a deep possibility for misunderstandings to arise among employees of an organization working together owing to their different culture. Culture leads to certain specific preferences over others for particular states of affairs and also tends to influence interpretation of environmental cues, and responses. Corporate culture leads to strategy implementation as it throws light on personality traits which can in turn evaluate the job performance, its requirements, and what actions are supportive of executing a strategy efficiently.

In present scenario, due to the fast growth and globalization, the culture and dynamics of every country are changing rapidly (Budhwar, P.S.; Debrsh, Y.A., 2002). Amidst these ever changing dynamics the most important issue for organizations is to capture the competitive advantage. It is essential for the multi national organizations to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage to operate on a global platform. The values, beliefs and traits of employees are affected by the strategy which in turn forms the working culture in any organization. Both strategies and culture of any organization together ensures the attainment of the vision of the organization. The culture of an organization facilitates all the strategies identified by the organization. Thus, this unique combination of strategies and culture in an organization does not require change either in strategies or the organizational structure of an organization.

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Organizational Culture:

It is a common pool of belief and views. This lays the foundation for decisions made within and outside the organization as well. It also determines how members in an organization act when confronted with decision-making responsibilities. These beliefs and values change with passage of time as well. Organizational culture is the way things are done around. There are two approaches to culture and strategy. According to Bate, these approaches are transforming and confirming. Transforming refers to changing and breaking the existing patterns and confirming refers to maintaining order and continuity (Willcoxson, L. et al., 2000).

The employees of any organization are like a family. They have a common perspective and viewpoint. This further lays the foundation for the culture. There are seven dimensions of an organizational culture, namely, attention to detail, innovation and risk taking, outcome orientation, stability, people orientation, aggressiveness, and team orientation. Each one outlines the organizational culture and its validity.

In order to create a favorable working environment, an organization shall inculcate following values that would encourage organizational learning. These values, long term vision; teamwork; communication & dialogue; empowerment; risk assumption; ambiguity tolerance, are the part of collaborative culture of an organization (Lopez et al, 2004).

Event Industry in UK:

This is multimillion dollar industry growing at a rapid pace worldwide It includes hosting of events of various stature and semantics. Various events ranging from birthdays to marriages, parties to religious occasions require explicit planning and detailing in advance, this is where event managers are needed, to execute these events well.

Thus they consist of different events like personal events, leisure events, cultural events, religious events, corporate events etc. The trends in the event industry, trends change rapidly to add extra and special features to the event. It is this extra special part that facilitates the event industry in gaining competitive advantage (Singh, T., 2009).

The latest trend that is being witnessed by event industry in UK is ‘Themes’. Themes tend to make the whole event more interesting and cohesive, thus giving an edge to the event industry. A well thought out theme is highly popular and helps the organization to gain competitive advantage. An organization can include a theme that revolves around the corporate culture of the company to have a varied theme and to promote organization’s culture as well (Gilchrist, A., 2007).

Event corporate has grown and become major function for the firms in UK. This reveals the unseen talent in the employees as well and further motivates them. The corporate culture in UK is in its full swing and it keeps on changing with the time to adjust the period. This corporate culture will assist in improving the work culture of the firms and would enable them to gain competitive advantage (Event Management UK, 2010).

Today, events are prima focal point for any culture as well as ocassion. The central importance of events has been stimulated by the socio-economic-cultural status quo of any country .This has lead to the emergence of events as industry in all sectors today . One of the most identifiable milestones propelling the event industry forward has been the Millennium Celebrations. Due to large scale public events like Olympics,it has given events a more substantial standing in a global context.

Managing Organizational Culture

Employees of event management companies have diversified cultural values, but when they are at work they always share common organizational culture that should be friendly, motivating, conducive, healthy, cohesiveness etc. Corporate Event Planning plays an important role in bounding an event management company’s management and office staff. This management of organizational culture in an event management firm certainly offers a competitive advantage to the firm. There can be many motivations for a firm behind the planning of corporate fun event. It is quite necessary for management to make a bound between the office staff. A company can only get success if all the employees work together for the sake development of the company and nothing do better then throwing an event where all the employees can enjoy or share their view points.

There are lots of events taking place everyday in our society. These are being organized on large scale stretching to number of days. The preparation for these mega events involves a lot of people. The involvement of lot of people is fruitful if the organizational culture of these people is conducive to better performance. Event management companies need to develop a separate professionalism for this field regarding its prospect. Due to the expansion in the corporate sectors, their requirements too have risen giving way to the event on the large basis. The corporate cultures play a larger role in this event organization and management. The corporate culture of the event management companies, due to their good performances has improved their prospect in enlarging the structure of such events. This has led the evolution of event corporate. These events are organized for either the executive class or for employees. It helps them to keep intact their workforce. These events have become now the usual itinerary of the firms in UK. They are there to be incorporated in their annual calendar. It is these that keep their employees enjoy their work and perform best to their ability (Event Management UK, 2010).

Conclusion

There exists a big debate between optimists and pessimists upon the topic of management of culture. However, culture can be managed if certain obstacles are taken care of. At times it does get complicated to manage culture if the culture of an organization is very complex and is not properly defined in an organization (Consortium Research Program, n.d.).

In an event management industry, a multinational company attains competitive advantage by transfer of valuable resources among its various businesses in different countries, by utilizing the opportunities existing out of the brand name of the company and also by capitalization inter business and inter country cooperation.

Management shall also make an active participation in all the cultural events to bring life to an event and make it more interesting for the employees of the organization (Jackson, W.D. et al, 1995).

Event industry is at a rapid growth pace and is expected to grow further in future at a high pace. The organizational culture needs to be maintained by the management of such companies in effective manner so that employees over there can give their maximum output/ productivity with maximum satisfaction levels. The effective corporate culture not only helps individual employees to grow, but, it does help event management companies as well to grow in long run and maximize their wealth through higher customer satisfaction levels.

References:

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