The role of leaders in the formation of positive attitudes to the organizational culture

However, today, there are still a lot of examples of organizations which suffer from unethical policies and low organizational culture but such a situation cannot last forever. In order to understand the ruinous character of the lack of healthy organizational culture caused by weak leadership or attempts of leaders to avoid responsibility for the development of organizational culture, it is necessary to point out that normal functioning of an organization needs proper and responsible leadership since a variety of people working within organization cannot organize themselves and establish some basic principles and norms of organizational culture. At the same time, an organization’s leaders should encourage employees to accept basic principles and norms of organizational culture from the moment they first enter this organization and this is the function of a leader to inform the employee about organization’s history, its traditions and culture before he/she agrees to employ a new person, for instance (Wilkins, 2006). In such a situation, one of the major goals of a leader is to shape positive attitude of the personnel to the suggested organizational change or organizational policies at large.

Naturally, the question concerning recommendations to leaders as for the formation of positive attitudes and promotion of healthy organizational culture arises. In fact, on answering this question, partially it is possible to refer to the role of leaders in the formation of healthy organizational culture mentioned just above. To put it more precisely it is really possible to recommend to an organization’s leaders to become keepers of organizational culture and traditions (Schmitt and Simonson, 2008). It means that they really should be possibly close to the organization’s ideal of a perfect employee as possible.

In actuality, it means that there actions, behavior, and attitude to other people, including employees should fully correspond to basic cultural norms accepted within the company. At the same time, in order to make the existing norms and rules acceptable, leaders should carefully select the personnel. In such a way, it would be possible to create a team of people who share the same moral values, views, ideas that would naturally minimize possible conflicts and create healthy ambiance within the organization (Wilkins, 2006). In this respect, leaders should be good psychologists to understand what kind of person they employ. On the other hand, they should also amply inform potential employees about their demands and cultural norms that exist within the organization.

Obviously, such a careful selection of personnel that would share the basic cultural values of an organization may be a very efficient means to improve organizational culture. Nonetheless, this measure is obviously insufficient since there remains room for frivolous interpretation of cultural and moral norms by leaders themselves that would naturally undermine healthy organizational culture.

In such a situation, it is possible to recommend establishing clear rules and norms that would be understandable and acceptable for all the staff working within organization. For instance, it may be some ethical code developed by the organization in order to standardize behavior and work of the personnel, including leaders. At the same time, it is very important that this code, consisting of the set of basic rules and norms obligatory for all people working in the organization, was developed not only by leaders but by all employees that can be done by means of consultations or, else it is possible to stimulate employees propositions as for the future ethical code of the organization (Wilkins, 2006). Naturally, nobody can force people to act according to the demands of the code developed by leaders uniquely, while the contribution of every employee in the creation of such a code would make it more acceptable to every employee who would readily follow the rules he/she in person has suggested or agreed.

At first glance, it seems as if the role of leaders in this respect seems to be not very important but this is an erroneous view because it is the leaders who should initiate the improvement of the organizational culture and stimulate employees to contribute to the formation of high culture of the organization. Moreover, it is leaders who should follow directly to the basic norms and rules developed in the ethical code. Anyway, it is very important that they remained democratic and were not in a privileged position compared to employees (Wilkins, 2006). Otherwise, no measures to make organizational culture really healthy would be efficient.

At the same time, it is very important to maintain the confidence of employees in the ability of the leader to lead the organization to the success that will contribute to the formation of a positive attitude of employees to the leader. The latter is particularly important because the respect of a leader can be important factor that can help him to convince his subordinates in the correctness of his policies and shape positive attitude to the development of the organization or possible changes within the organization that are introduced by the leader.

Conclusion

Thus, taking into account all above mentioned, it is possible to conclude that ethics, values and attitudes are crucial for the efficient organizational performance. In this respect, it is important to lay emphasis on the fact that today the role of leaders in the formation of ethical organizational culture can hardly be underestimated. This is why they should carefully work on the permanent improvement of organizational culture as one of the main conditions of the successful functioning of the organization. At the same time, they should be democratic enough to hear the opinion of ordinary employees in order to avoid possible conflicts in the results of different views on organizational culture.

In other words, healthy organizational culture may be achieved only by means of permanent communication between leaders and employees and only due to their close cooperation the organizational culture may acquire essential forms that would be acceptable for all people working within an organization. Finally, it would simply make the concept of the healthy, ethical organizational culture more understandable not only for employees but for leaders themselves.

In addition, it is necessary to take into consideration that ethical organizational culture is based on the set of values which is accepted in the particular cultural environment and values can differ depending on the country and cultural norms and traditions accepted within a community. In such as a situation, leaders are responsible for the respect of values and for the formation of positive attitudes of people to the organizational culture and basic ethical norms and values accepted within the organization.