Cultural Determinants Of Behaviour Control In Organizations

The paper explores the impact of organizational culture on control of organization members? behavior. Every organization must develop a certain method of behavior control in order to provide coordinated and effective collective action in accomplishing of its goals. Organizational culture with its assumptions, values and norms defines how an organization understands the nature of human behavior in social groups, and thus a suitable manner of control of this behavior. The paper uses Mintzberg?s classification of five methods of organizational behavior control which are differentiated according to two basic criteria: the level of restrictiveness and the level of formalization or personalization. On the other hand, organizational culture classification by Handy recognizes four types of culture, which can be differentiated according to two criteria: distribution of power and orientation towards work or social structure. Based on matching of the criteria for organizational culture types differentiation and methods of behavior control, the hypotheses on causal relations between them are established in the paper. The conclusion is that role culture implies standardization of processes, power culture requires direct supervision, task culture requires standardization of outputs, and human culture imposes standardization of knowledge or direct interpersonal communication as a method of behavioral control.