Introductory Chapter: Organizational Culture - How Much Underused Potential Does Science Have?

1. Why will research on organizational culture remain relevant?

A lot of popular tips and ideas that offer an organization the success in one or another field of its activity and are presented as deus ex machina reach the leaders of the organizations currently; as a result, it often becomes difficult to get a handle on this abundance.

However, quite a few executives or founders of organizations are surprised that the result did not meet their expectations. Why? Usually, this happens because of the fact that even in the twenty-first century, there are some people who look at the organization from the position that has been outdated for hundreds of years, as at a lifeless machine, where after the improvement of one or another detail, it should work better.

Future-oriented organizations, and more specifically, the people who manage them and work for them, should see the organization as an intellectual and smart entity, that consists of many minds, values and beliefs.

The assumptions of this approach are based on the researches that are becoming particularly active in recent decades, having understood that organizational culture is a significant phenomenon, explaining both the management and organizational dynamics and development [1], although the history of scientific exploration of the phenomenon comprises just a few decades, and it hardly received the attention of researchers until the beginning of the 1980s [2]. However, the comparatively short history of the research results from the fact that the areas of research investigating different aspects of life and management of the organization are not only intertwined and enrich one another but also allow presuming incredible results of these processes.

Drucker [3], observing the processes in the organizations at the end of the last century, accurately identified that creative human intellectual activity will become one of the most important investments of organizations in the new century and results of other studies support it by five key factors of organizational creativity, such as organizational climate, leadership style, organizational culture, resources and skills and structure and systems of an organization [4]. Reviews of newer studies highlight the impact of organizational culture on various knowledge management processes and their links with organizational performance [5, 6], considering the close relationship with the innovativeness of the organizations [7, 8], etc.

On the other hand, the studies do not yet provide unambiguous answers to the questions that arise to both practitioners in the management of organizations and scientists researching the phenomenon of organizational culture. Although some researches support the significance of organizational culture for performance, Scott et al. [9] who studied the researches of a strong culture and efficiency of organizational activities noted the fact that these relationships are not always confirmed; therefore, in order to find out the relationship between organizational culture (cultures) and activity (activities), much greater methodological resourcefulness is necessary. The studies miss unambiguous answers on how to manage cultural diversity in organizations [10]. In addition, Johnson et al. [11] argue that there is no single recipe of organizational culture change suitable for all. According to the authors, attention to context with key features including diagnosis and evaluation of culture, a combination of support from leaders and others in the organization and strategies to embed the culture change is important for the change process to happen. In this context, the analysis of studies conducted by Vom Brocke and Sinnl [12] shows that culture in business process management requires a more comprehensive holistic approach. And these are only some of the aspects of the broad palette of the exploration of the phenomenon of organizational culture, indicating the number of questions that still remain unanswered. It is difficult to find at least one area of organizational activities that would not be influenced by organizational culture, which is demonstrated by the directions of research conducted in recent decades and the abundance of this research.

2. The scientific community’s interest in the phenomenon of organizational culture

Publications of the Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate Analytics) (hereafter WoS) database were selected for the analysis of scientific research. The search criteria were keywords ‘organizational culture’ in title, in topic and in search by highly cited in field (Table 1). Since the research starting from 1990 can be found in the WoS database, the statistics of publications from 1990 to 2018 was reviewed. The review of the change of the number of publications on the topic in the past 30 years shows the trends of growth of the number of studies indicating the scientific community’s interest in this phenomenon.

Thus, from 1990 to the present day in 2018, organizational culture researches (according to the title search) were published in 2084 publications (according to the topic search in 16,382, from which 81 are highly cited in field). All of them show a non-decreasing interest in the phenomenon of organizational culture, but it should be noted that the dynamics of the change in highly cited prompts that are far from all research conducted during this period are assessed equally highly in the scientific community. Further, it is worthwhile discussing how the spectrum and topics of research on the organizational culture were changing during these years, disclosing new aspects of this phenomenon.

3. Thematic changes in the spectrum of research on organizational culture

Publications of the year 2018, i.e. 23 publications (group 1), and research papers published in 1990, i.e. 20 publications (group 2), were selected for further analysis. Review of organizational culture studies of 2018 is presented in Table 2.

Thus, 23 publications have been registered in the WoS database in 2018 until May; however, not only the formal dates but also the fact that the researches have to go a long way before publishing must be taken into account. In any case, when looking at both the geography of the published researches (the USA, Jordan, India, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey, the Czech Republic, etc.), at the areas of activity of the investigated organizations and at the topics, we can see that considerable attention is also given to organizations operating in developing markets, covering a wide range of organizational activities and impact on the society in the context of organizational culture in recent years. In response to the challenges faced by organizations, researchers turn their attention to the interactions of organizational culture with the efficiency of the organization, management of activity and leadership problems. The relationship with employees is particularly highlighted, as well as their response to actions of the organization. Knowledge management, responsibility to the stakeholders, relations with them, etc. are also emphasized. Aspects of organizational culture and climate and classical distribution of organizational culture, on the basis of which researches are carried out in modern organizations, remain relevant in research perspective, together with the emerging understanding of the significance of networks of relationships between persons within and outside organizations on organization culture, which provides the background for update of theoretical approaches. Despite abundant research to examine organizational culture and existing theories, the contexts of national social and cultural distinctions provide new aspects and expand the knowledge of the analyzed phenomenon.

Thus, in comparison with the papers, which were published in 1990 (Table 3), we see how the thematic field expanded on the basis of measurement and assessment of organizational culture developed by the researches in recent decades, strengthened by organizational culture impact on innovation, knowledge management and relationships not only within an organization but also between different organizations.

A considerable part of published papers were reviews of researches significant for the development of theory. Schein’s organizational culture system, distinguishing in this context, undoubtedly influenced the subsequent researchers, alongside grounding the relationships of organizational culture and organizational climate, leadership, laying the foundations of measuring and interpreting, etc. The insights of Hofstede [55, 56, 57] about the impact of the national culture on organizational culture opened new areas of research that expand the understanding of organizational culture, as well as raise new objectives to the scientists researching the phenomenon and provide new opportunities to international companies to apply national specificities and differences in practice [58, 59, 33]. So, on the one hand, this brief comparison of the episodes of research of 1990 and 2018 shows how scientists’ view penetrated into the depth and broadened in response to the emerging challenges. On the other hand, it shows the complexity and multidimensionality of the phenomenon of organizational culture, and it becomes the untapped potential for new studies.