Organizational culture clash: Conquering management's resistance and unethical behavior

Abstract

A strong ethical organizational culture is undoubtedly of critical importance to maintain sustainability, high performance and a positive working environment. Human resource managers are dedicated to bring change, stability, as well as build a sustainable organizational culture with the cooperation of the leaders and managers of the organizations they operate. Nonetheless, any kind of change cannot occur only with the efforts of the human resources manager if the management doesn’t give its “blessings” for it. The present qualitative case study design sought to explore the organizational culture of a profitable European public organization being the only player in the economical business market it operates. A semi structured interview took place and data was collected from a single participant who shared his/her experiences throughout the years worked in this organization. Findings in this study showed that employees don’t exert resistance towards organizational change when they perceive it is for their own benefit. Even though, the organizational changes didn’t have a direct impact on employees’ monetary package, these were welcomed and supported immediately because these changes managed to change positively their work life environment and wellbeing. Building an environment of trust, support, transparency, meritocracy, respect, and a clear culture with mission, vision, values, strategies, and objectives, make people feel motivated to work, increase their productivity and bring innovative ideas. Lastly, unethical behavior and inequality appeared increasingly in the Public organization under investigation, thus showing the necessity of taking measures and change the anachronistic mentality. Ideally would be to change the management, and focus to build an ethical and sustainable organizational culture for the people to work in.