Culture of Tesco

Edgar Schein, one of the most prominent theorists of organisational culture, gave the following definition: The culture of a group can be defined as: "A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. (Schein 2003:3)

In this report, I'm going to analyse Tesco's organisational culture, and ways that it could become more effective if it could change its culture.

It is essential to understand the organisational culture of a company if you want to make changes to how work is done, what type of work is being done. Understanding the culture and, as required, changing it, can mean the difference between attracting and retaining good employees and driving away the best employees with an environment that doesn't encourage, challenge, or reward them. The beliefs and ideas that organisations hold about who they are, what they are trying to do, and what their environment is like have a much greater tendency to realize themselves than is usually believed. (Morgan 2004:149)

The culture of an organisation should fit the external environment in which the organisatio¬n operates. There are strong cultures and weak cultures. Ian Pyper's view of a strong culture is characterised by intensely held, clearly ordered and widely shared core values as cited in Management of Change (2009:382).

While organisations in different cultural settings have a tendency to become increasingly similar in terms of organisational design the people who work in them can still differ considerably in terms of culture and a person who moves from one cultural setting to another may need to change his or her behaviour to match the cultural norms of the new location.

An organisational culture is a group of people who have been trained, or who simply have learned by those around them, how to act in any given situation. The other aspect of organisational culture that is often true is that it becomes very deeply rooted. It is the identity of a company, and because of that, in some ways it becomes an identity of those who work there, as well. The people end up affecting the culture as much as the culture is affecting them.

In this report I will look at the organisational culture that Tesco have adopted over the years and how they have changed to improve the overall culture of their company. I am going to use the cultural web, which was developed by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in 1992. The cultural Web is made up of six interrelated elements that help to make up what john son and Scholes call the "paradigm" – the pattern or model – of the work environment www.mindtools.com as accessed on 27/11/09.

When Tesco started out, the business