According to Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990), it is a commonplace claim that human resource managers are vital to managing culture within organisations. Critically evaluate the idea that culture can be managed through human resource management.
Introduction
Arguably, the management of organizational culture represents the most significant function and process in contemporary organizations operating in a gradually competitive business context the world over. This is because organizational culture revolves around human resources, which represent a critical asset within companies. According to McGrath and Tobia (2008), organizational culture entails an indispensable but hidden resource involving relatively powerful forces that influences an organization’s performance, employee cooperation, and experience among others. Each organization develops a distinctive culture and thus underscoring the significance of proper management of the organization to produce desired outcomes (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2016). Accordingly, organizations usually seek to manage organizational culture by defining expected behaviour and developing norms that contribute to the achievement of overarching goals and objectives. Human resource managers, in particular, are understood to play an integral role in managing culture within organizations using strategies and policies driven toward human resources behaviour and actions (Acroyd & Crowdy, 1990). Yet, attempts to manage culture within organizations usually bring about additional issues including the need for change management. Culture evolves and it is complex including sub-cultures representing employees’ mindset, which can form countercultures (Knights & Willmott, 2017). This suggests organizational culture include a set of multidimensional imprints as well as evolves, which means the statement that culture can be managed through human resource management is unfounded. This essay critically evaluates the idea that culture can be managed through human resource management by drawing upon key literature by Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990). Appropriate models such as Schein’s (1990) organizational culture and Hofstede’s (1992) cultural dimensions are also applied to the analysis.