Organizational Culture

Culture, according to Vijay Sathe is "the set of important understandings (often unstated) that members of a community share in common." These shared understandings consist of our norms, values, attitudes, beliefs and ‘paradigms’.

Another definition given in Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary -- "culture is the integrated pattern of human behaviour that includes thought, speech, action, and artefacts and depends on man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations."

This second definition is an exciting one as increasing our capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge is one of the prime aims of Knowledge Management.

And yet another interesting definition from Edgar H. Schein:

"The culture of a group can now be defined as: A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems."