Organizational Culture at Zappos Assignment | Online Assignment

Not an essay, just need to answer the questions (A minimum of five sentences per question)

Module 15: Organizational Culture: 20J-BUAD309-194: Organizational Behavior
https://udel.instructure.com/courses/1510127/pages/module-15-organizational-culture?module_item_id=17941133 1/1
Cultures begin with the organization founder(s) who have the organizational vision and are typically work with new,
small organizations. Cultures are created in three ways: 1) company founders hire employees like themselves; 2)
employees are indoctrinated and socialized; and 3) founders’ behavior encourages employees to identify with them
and internalize their beliefs, values, and assumptions.
So how can cultures be sustained? 1) The first way is in the selection of employees. The explicit goal of the selection
process is to identify and hire individuals with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully. The final
decision, because it’s significantly influenced by the decision maker’s judgment of how well the candidates will fit into
the organization, identifies people whose values are essentially consistent with at least a good portion of the
organization’s.
Selection also provides information to applicants. Those who perceive a conflict between their values and those of the
organization can remove themselves from the applicant pool. Selection thus becomes a two-way street, allowing
employer or applicant to avoid a mismatch and sustaining an organization’s culture by selecting out those who might
attack or undermine its core values.
2) The actions of top management also have a major impact on the organization’s culture. Through words and
behavior, senior executives establish norms that filter through the organization about, for instance, whether risk taking
is desirable, how much freedom managers give employees, what is appropriate dress, and what actions earn pay
raises, promotions, and other rewards.
Text: Ch. 15, pages 508-511; E-text: 15-4, 15-4a, 15-4b, 15-4c
3) Organization culture is transmitted (or taught) to employees through socialization. Employees learn through
observation and through managers communicating this information to them. Stories, rituals, symbols, and language
play important roles in communicating organization culture. Stories circulate through many organizations, anchoring
the present in the past and legitimating current practices. They typically include narratives about the organization’s
founders, rule breaking, rags-to riches successes, reductions in the workforce, relocation of employees, reactions to
past mistakes, and organizational coping. Employees also create their own narratives about how they came to either fit
or not fit with the organization during the process of socialization, including first days on the job, early interactions with
others, and first impressions of organizational life.
Rituals are repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of the organization.
Symbols are things such as the layout of corporation headquarters, the types of automobile top executives are given,
aircraft, (those are considered material symbols), or size of offices and executive perks. These convey to employees
who is important, the degree of egalitarianism top management desires, and the kinds of behavior that are appropriate,
such as risk taking, conservative, authoritarian, participative, individualistic, or social.
Finally, many organizations and subunits within them use language to help members identify with the culture, attest to
their acceptance of it, and help preserve it. Unique terms describe equipment, officers, key individuals, suppliers,
customers, or products that relate to the business. New employees may at first be overwhelmed by acronyms and
jargon that, once assimilated, act as a common denominator to unite members of a given culture or subculture.