Select an organization you are familiar with (i.e. one where you have worked or where you would like to work). If you have access to the Internet, you could examine the annual report of a company, its mission statement, its directors and possibly the way it is organized, to try to answer the following questions.

1. What are the basic assumptions within the organization?

2. Where do you think these assumptions come from?

3. To what extent could the national culture have an influence on the organizational behaviour of this company?

Defining an organizational culture Schein’s definition of organizational culture, as quoted in Concept 1.2, is as follows:

(a) a pattern of basic assumptions,

(b) invented, discovered, or developed by a given group,

(c) as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration,

(d) that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore

(e) is to be taught to new members as the

(f) correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to chosen problems.