Organisational Culture

Some of the visible aspects of culture in Primark are:

The language and jargon that is used by employees and managers in Primark is formal, when communicating to each other managers will often use other words to describe what they want the employees to do instead of plain English. Examples of jargon that is used by managers in Primark includes deep dive which means getting into detail, joined up thinking which means to discusses view points of employees and come to an agreement or compromise, win solution that means to provide a product or service that makes everyone happy, moving forward meaning to progress on an idea and USP that means the unique selling point. All of this jargon is used most often by the managers when speaking to the employees.  The language that employees use when dealing with customers at Primark is more laid back and less formal so that they are able to communicate on the same level as the customers to provide a good service. Managers will use jargon in place of other words in order to get a point across in a swift manner and expect the employees to understand what they mean by using these words.  It also displays a sense of authority as  when a manager uses jargon to talk to an employee is that it puts them in a higher position as they are using formal language whereas an employee would use more informal language even when communicating with their managers in Primark.

Another visible aspect of culture in Primark is their motto, which is `uptown clothes down right prices`.  This shows that Primark is promoting to its customers that it is able to provide its customers good quality clothes for a price that is reasonably cheap and that they believe that customers would be willing to pay for the products

Unwritten rules and expectations that Primark has form its staff members and managers is for them to always be dressed in their uniform and be present themselves in a professional manner when dealing with customers.

The way in which managers dress in Primark is that managers generally wear white shirts and trousers for men and white blouses and either skirts or trousers for women which is more formal and presets the managers as having more responsibility and be more professional. The uniform for sales employees is all black clothes and black shoes. The difference between the clothing shows that managers have higher authority and a higher rank within the organisations than the sales employees.  The dress code of the managers looks more for an office environment but the dress code of Primark sales employees is although unique does not look good and can give customers the idea that Primark does not take into consideration their employees dress code and how this can impact whether customers would feel comfortable dealing with people wear all black or not.

A power culture

What handy meant by the power culture, was that in an organisations driven by power there would be a lot of employees that would be aiming to reach certain positions in the business and that there would be a central powerful figure in the business. The central powerful figure in a business such as Pirmark would be either a CEO or a chairman of the business, as it is the highest position within the business and the CEO or chairman has influence and power  over decisions made in the business and ultimately has the final say about what changes or improvements need to be made in the business. The power culture also shows that the employees within this environment are able to make fast decision it is ideal for the head of a business to be in this culture because based on their decision a business can expand or fail .  there is more faith in one person in the power culture and it does not have faith in comities as the individual in power needs to be able to change very rapidly and adapt new strategy of business or can die due to the person in power.

A role culture

The role culture portrays what happens in an organisation that does not need to constantly change. In which employees are assignment jobs to carry out by higher up managers and staff within the organisations. The work that is given to the employees is decided by certain rules or regulations that have to be adhered to. There is not much co-ordinations within the organisation and the work is all paper based. The power within the culture of a bank is based on the hierarchy with senior staff having a lot of power and junior staff not having much objexction and carrying out the jobs at hand.  The job description is more important within these types of organisations such as banks and building societies as opposed to skill and personalities of people who control the culture. Employees in the organisation are not advised or encouraged to performance better as what they are doing following their job description is sufficient enough

A task culture

A task culture organisation focuses on getting projects done, it also relies on team work between staff, the task that is at hand is the key for the organisation to be able to generate a profit by completing it. It relies heavily on research development actives.  Lots of different task are carried out by employees in order to accomplish future goals. An example of a task  culture based organisation would be tesco , the reason for this is that tesco relies heavily on information and research data that it  collects , this research data is used to see how tesco is performing and if it is doing well enough to expand their business interests. The are lots of different teams in tesco that deal with different task and they are costly changing the task in Tesco . Within a task based organisation it is very important for their to be information and expertise because their needs to be information for the business to use in order to operate and assignment task to employees to carry out. The expertise is very important because if the organisation such as tesco has people who have a lot of expertise and are expertise in their field of work within tesco then the business will be able to carry out the task and feel comfortable that they will be able to succeed in completion of the tasks.  The culture is also  flexible as it offers their to be changes for example if employees need to be able to leave at a certain time or someone is not comfortable doing the task they are assignment to tesco gives them these options. In contrast to power role culture task culture is much more relaxed and less bureaucratic. If there is lack of information or the information is not up to date with restrictions on resources the culture can become a more power based or role based culture.

A person culture

Person culture focuses on single induviduals as they are central top priority in a person culture organisation. The self emplyed organisation revloves ajd depeds on these people and it only exists to serve the interest to the people within the organisation. Examples of a people Culture is architects, barristers and stockbrokers. The whole business in these fields of work relies upon the employees a lot and so there is more communication and interaction between the employee and managers in the business. In the power culture there is athority and employees are told what  to do and in a person cultue the person is able to choose what projects they will work on as it will generate alot of income for the business and the employee will feel more comefortable when working on projects this would wllow.for them to perform.much more productivly. The perdob culture is more sutible for a self emplyed induvidual and is not appropriate for a business organisation as it only deals with the best interest and performance of an induvidual and not a group of people for which a role or task organisation would be best suited to.

The problem with classifying culture into one of the four types described above is that culture is made up of all four of the types mentioned by Handy. Without the classification of one type then culture would not be appropriately categorised. It is difficult to define culture due to the many definitions it has, culture has different meanings depending on the way a business operates. The way in which employees work in a business has a large impact on the culture within the business and not all types o of culture can be classified in the four different types of culture. If culture is classified into one of the culture types then it puts restrictions on the business organisational structure because they would not be able to make changes in the organisation in order to improve the business as when employees would have adjusted to a type of culture environment then the would face difficulty and it could lead t employees leaving the businesses. The employees for example in the role culture are very different form the person culture, the reason for this is that in a person culture it revolves around a single individual to be able to keep the business running and the person culture allows for the person such as an architect and take on different roles in the business and make suggestions for changes. Whereas in the role culture all decisions and work assigned is based on as hierarchy system , employees do not have much say and have to complete task up to the rules and regulations that have been set out by the organisation.

In conclusion the organisation culture in an organisations is very important as it allows the organisations to function properly, there is no business that is not able to be categories in one of the types of culture mentioned  above . The reasons is that structure of a business relies on the culture to be able to operate a business in a good manner and make sure that its employees are able to know what they are required to do within the business. The culture in a business is very important to be analysed as put into practice because it will allow the employees to be more comfortable in carrying out their tasks. The organisation culture that Primark would be best categories is the task culture, the reason is that as Primark has lots of different teams in their stores all the teams are assigned a certain amount of task to be completed by a certain date. This falls under the task culture as the business relies on employees to carry out different tasks at the same time to be able to provide their customers with the service. The employees of Primark are in a comfortable laid back culture as each employee in a team is assigned tasks that are not difficult to carry out and team members help each other to carry out the assigned tasks.