Exploration of a Model of Robust Organizational Culture: Inputs from Functionalism and Deontology

Each organization craves an effective and sustainable lifespan. The state of effectiveness and sustainability of an organization is dependent on its own culture. Organizational culture is a set of shared meanings, assumptions, values, and norms (Schein, 1992: Hofstede, 2001; Luo, 2005; Erkutlu, 2011; Campbell and Göritz, 2014). Therefore, the culture can be construed as the substratum, which guides an organization in its decision making and helps an organization in determining the nature of its every course of action. Further, organizational culture not only influences the behavioural manifestations of the stakeholders (internal as well as external) but also invigorates the relationship between the stakeholders and the organization. Since the organizational culture is critical to the holistic growth of an organization, it is required to be robust. The robustness squarely depends mainly on two items: Structure and Principles. Organizational structure is made up of various stakeholders from the bottom to the top and a well-knitted relationship between them. The principles are the values and norms which bring all the stakeholders with diverse objectives and unite them under one roof with a well-knitted and meaningful relationship. The current study is an endeavour to develop models for the structure and principles with an objective to usher a robust organizational culture. The study finds that the sociological perspective Functionalism has the potential to contribute to the genesis of the structure. The functionalism states that each member of the society is unique in its own way and therefore, has a unique role to play into the Being of a society. In the similar fashion, the principles are to be conceived taking attributes of Deontology – a dominant ethical perspective, which postulates dutycentric actions.