PEOPLE.IDEAS.PERFORMANCE

68 3HUVRQ FXOWXUH There are certain organizations where the employees feel that they are more important than their organization. Such organizations follow a culture known as person culture. In a person culture, individuals are more concerned about their own self rather than the organization. The organization in such a culture takes a back seat and eventually suffers. Employees just come to the office for the sake of money and never get attached to it. They are seldom loyal towards the management and never decide in favor of the organization. One should always remember that organization comes first and everything else later. 5ROH FXOWXUH Role culture is a culture where every employee is delegated roles and responsibilities according to his specialization, educational qualification and interest to extract the best out of him. In such a culture employees decide what best they can do and willingly accept the challenge. Every individual is accountable for something or the other and has to take ownership of the work assigned to him. Power comes with responsibility in such a work culture. The cultural definitions, and cultural framework approaches and models presupposes that organizations, their managers and staff, are disposed towards attaining high and improved levels of performance. Additionally, the assumption is that required performance, actual performance, reported performance and defined performance, are all noted and agreed rationally, and stated in terms of priorities that deliver in the best interests of the organization and all of its stakeholders. In practice, every aspect of performance has to be attended to in terms of all the cultural pressures indicated above. Especially, attention is required following areas: culture and rewards have to be aligned. The main extrinsic driver of performance is reward. Staff quickly know and understand what is rewarded, and what is not. So, if for example, the organization is overtly a task culture, but in practice rewards adherence to rules and procedures, then staff will adhere to the rules, and expect to be rewarded accordingly. cultural and behavioral values that are needed and wanted have to be worked on continuously, in order to ensure that you have the cultural design required. Failure to do so leads to a kind of cultural drift, in which staff set their own standards and patterns of conduct behavior and performance; and without continuous attention, organizations in practice have little choice but to reward what the staff deliver. The frameworks and models outlined above argue that no cultural type is better than another, because the types emerge as a result of circumstances, and because in any case organizations are different. The frameworks and models do however indicate where effective interventions can and should be made, so as to develop the basis for sustained and improving performance. 3(5)250$1&( Establishing the boundaries of performance and its management has to be seen in the context of overall aims and objectives, priorities and demands; and as stated in the introduction above, this relates critically to the patterns of behavior, approach to the staff, and corporate values. It follows from this that there is no simple measure of performance (Pettinger, 2002; Pettinger, 1999). Organizations clearly have to operate cost effectively, and at a profit. However, a full understanding of cost effectiveness is only possible if the totality of the organization and its activities is taken into account. Understanding cost effectiveness has to be seen therefore as the outcome of the fullest possible knowledge and understanding of everything that takes place, and everything that is expected of the organization.