Question:

Organisation: Innocent Drinks

Company website: http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/

1. A review of the culture of the organisation with illustrative examples.

+, What type of culture exist at this organisation; can this be contrasted with other types of organisational culture?
+, Is there more than one type of culture in this organisation?
+, Apply the “Culture Web” to this organisation.

2. Power and control

+, What is the difference between power and control (Apply some of the theory here – Mullins Chapter 11 – Essentials of Organisational Behaviour)
+, What are the control mechanisms that are in place in this organisation (Educated assumptions can be made if there is a lack of specific detail available).

This essay contains 550 -650 words.

Answer:

Title: A review of the culture power and control of the organization

1. Review of the culture of the organization with illustrative examples

The organizational culture of Innocentdrinks.co.uk shows that it is a compete (market) organization. In this culture, market competition is a key driving force. Compete (market) organizations, such as this one, possess a largely outward focus necessitated by stiff competition. They maintain an external orientation while valuing differentiation over integration. In compete (market) organizations, most of the focus is on external relationships involving customers, suppliers, consultants, regulators, and so on.

The Innocentdrink.co.uk gives many hints on the market nature of the company’s organizational culture. The website is highly interactive as indicated by the presence of features such as blog, careers, family, health, press, and daily thoughts section. In other words, the website is highly interactive, and the family analogy is used to describe the community of members who sign up in this website as interested parties.

This organizational culture can be easily contrasted with other types of organizational culture, namely control (hierarchy), compete (market), create (adhocracy), and collaborate (clan) (Schein 2010, p. 29). The control culture resembles that of the stereotypical large and bureaucratic organization. There is a high degree of stability and control coupled with internal focus and integration. The organization places great value on control, standardization, and a well-defined structure of decision-making and authority. Such hierarchical control is absent at Innocentdrinks.co.uk.

Similarly, a comparison may be drawn between the organizational culture of Innocentdrinks.co.uk with that of collaborate (clan) culture. As the name implies, the clan culture is all about teamwork. This entails a lot of inward focus with great concern being put on integration. However, unlike the control culture, there is a lot of focus on flexibility and discretion, as opposed to control and stability.

An assessment of this website also indicates signs that the adhocracy culture is also present. This culture emphasizes on the full utilization of the opportunities of the Information Age, notably internet marketing. The company’s website, for instance is designed to address the volatile and fast-paced business environment of the information age. The success of Innocentdrinks.co.uk depends largely on innovation and creativity. This entails creating new opportunities, development of new products, such as Banana Plane.

In the culture web, the ‘stories’ factor strongly focuses on the interactivity of web tools in order to attract new customers (Herman 1981, p. 281). The main rituals and routines entail checking web updates, sending emails to new customers, and welcoming new members of the company’s family. The main symbol is the website and marketing themes, while the organizational culture reflects the versatility of the adhocracy culture. The control systems are not rigid and they emphasize on creativity, innovation, and change.  Powers structures are not succinctly outlined and pockets of real power are difficult to figure out.

2. Power and control

Power entails maintaining influence over the attitudes, behavior, and feelings of others while control entails the expression of commands, directives, demands, orders, and requests on how one should act, behave, think, feel, and believe (Mullins, 2008, p. 351). It is easy to differentiate between power and control using modern, critical, and post-modern theories (Mullins, 2008, p. 357). For instance, from a modern conception, the locus of power lies in knowledge, authority, and resolution of critical problems, while control entails monitoring employee performance and market bureaucracy. At Innocentdrinks.co.uk, the main control mechanism entails the introduction of innovations and creative ideas into the online marketing interface.

 

References

Herman, E, 1981, Corporate control, corporate power, London, Routledge.

Mullins, L, 2008, Essentials of Organizational Behaviour, Prentice Hall, Harlow.

Schein, E, 2010, Organizational culture and leadership, Foundation Press, New York.