The  Organization Culture

Olusanya Oyeyemi

Walden University

MMSL 6150

Dr. Raymond Williamson

12 March 2016

Abstract

This paper analyse the relationship between learning organization and organizational culture.

The Organization Culture

 

Mission:

The mission of the organization is to maintain, train and equip combat-ready, capable of winning a war, deterring aggression and maintaining freedom of the seas.  There are clear goals to accomplish the mission, training of personnel begin from boot camp where civilian are initiated into sailors’ life. After boot camp, they proceed to A school where they learn their primary duty task and C school, and advance school to become professional in their chosen career. Individual sailors are trained to be independent and confident in carrying out their duty. The duty of each sailor is clearly spelled out and in no reason should a sailor practice something different from his or her training. All necessary equipment and tools to perform their duties are made available. Benefits like; full medical benefit, financial assistance to the family when their spouse is away, social event to keep the family together, scholarship for both spouse and their children to further their education and family reunion program when they return.

The vision of the organization is demonstrated by the leaders, throughout the chain command, from the superior to the least sailor the mission of the organization and each deployment goal are communicated daily and monitor. To be sure everybody are on the same page. All leaders lead by example, anybody derailing from the mission is call to order. Management discuss the warfare of the team each day, any family issue is taking seriously and they use all available means to make sure their crew member are in the right mind. The organization value is clearly expressed, and there are various workshops, compulsory training to remind sailor of their value. They train and continue training to be a good ambassador of the United State in every country they visit or have to work. Individual value and responsibility are encouraged to enhance the organizational value. Organizational value is expressed from sailor’s dressing, choice of food, foreign relation and master of the duty and professional relationship with shipmates in a manner that respect individual dignity.

Learning Organization:

There are lots of growth and learning opportunities made available to sailors, every incident turns into training so that sailors can learn from it. For instance, a mishap in engineering unit that may or may not cause physical injury to personnel is turned into training. Also, the disrespectful attitude like sexual abuse or harassment, physical bullying, wrong representation as United State Navy ambassadors to foreign nations and many more are turning to training to prevent future occurrence. In addition, there are various opportunities that contribute to sailor’s growth in the organization. C. Schools are made available to upgrade sailors to civilian professional standard so that they can practice as a professional in the civilian world after their military life with their experience and certificate. There are various educational benefits to further their education; from Tuition Assistance, made available when they are on active duty to Gi BIL or MGI BIL that they can use after their military life.

Innovation is encouraged but the culture gives ways to bureaucracy in that sailors only see changes with instructions. They take survey regularly on how to better perform their duties but the process is delayed.  No sailor can take a risk or implement a new way of doing things on their own, all instructions and procedures are laid down in black and white tailored to every duties and voice can be heard and changes implemented. In other words, the need for change response is shown because of the bureaucracy system in place. Every suggestion of the need for change goes through a long process, pass through all the chain in command to reach the management and it takes months or years before the change can be implemented if approved.

The organization is rigid, there is no easy way to any change adaption. There are procedures for every event; technical procedure, managerial procedure, discipline procedure, dressing etc. Every instruction is on written procedure  and is a criminal offence punishable under UMCJ if not follow in details.  No tolerance to short cut across different divisions. For instance, VBSS is a task force team and members are selected from all divisions, they are a mixture of culinary, engineering, IT, combat, aviation, administrative, and Supply. Various other events are empowered to foster collaboration like offices cooking and serving the enlisted on some selected occasions, training across all departments on the ship for the sailor to earn their “sea warfare” barge.

Decision-making is organized in accordance with the procedure with procedures. All offers and enlisted have laid down procedure that guide all the decision. When things went wrong the first thing to check is whether the person in question follows procedure, if not, discipline action would follow. For this reason, any risk, because even when your initiative succeeds you will still be queried for not following the laid down procedure and for that reason no reward.

General Information:

Any outsider should be aware and be cautious of bureaucratic system in the organization in order to better understanding its culture. Most importantly, he/she should be aware that no small thing and big thing without the instruction on how to do it. Even down to how sailors should behave after working hours and their relationship with their family members has instruction. Once a sailor, the contract is 24/7 and US ambassador anywhere and anytime.

By analyzing the organization culture, I begin to understand better the importance of culture in the organization, both pros and cons. Howlett inferred that “culture can lift a leader change or serve as an anchor weighing down any attempt to effect change” (2006, p. 54). Then I realized that leader must not only understanding the values, culture, philosophy ethical standards, systems, procedures, information management control and reporting systems within their organization but know how to engineer changes within the structural capital as well (2006, p.52).

The organization is well functioning because they are progressing, maintaining the highest performing military force in the world, with largest personnel, best technology, capable and combat ready personnel endow with various languages of the world. The organization has the highest ethnic diversity in the world and diversity management program. The only possible area I think my perceptions of the organizational culture could bias my assessment is that I knew few of what happen within the officers in the military. I served as enlisted; there are many of secrecy in the leadership, even some aspect of chief’s affairs is not open to other enlisted not to talk of officers. But I believe that if there is going to be any deviation from my analyses with my knowledge of the organization, is going to be minimal.

Reference

Hewlett, R. (2006). The cognitive leader: Building winning organizations through

            knowledge leadership. Toronto: Roman & Littlefield Education.