The Effects of Organizational Culture on Strategic Planning

Organizational culture does effect strategic planning. In the research and personal experience below it is shown that culture can and will effect strategic planning. The inept or adaptive culture can decide whether a strategic plan succeeds or fails. People are at the heart of an organizational culture and that culture is at the heart of the strategic plan.

The Effects of Organizational Culture on Strategic Planning

Culture is rooted in deep soil in any organization. It is the way the organization lives and breathes, the way of life. That culture also has a strong effect on how strategic planning is developed. Is the culture strength, weakness, opportunity or it can be a threat? In the paragraphs that follow we will examine the effects of the culture on developing an organizations strategic plan.

What is organizational culture? Bethel (2007) defines organizational culture as “the shared set of beliefs, expectations, values, norms, and work routines that influences how members of an organization relate to one another and work together to achieve organizational goals”. This culture defines the work organization. It is not about work rules, direct supervision or disciplined processes. It is about the people and what expectations they create through internalized processes from the environment they are participating in. Organizational culture is a means of control. The control comes when a strong organizational culture is in place with values and norms driving members of staff to focus on what is best for the entire organization (Bethel, 2007). Understanding organizational culture is a key to understanding its impact on strategic planning.

Organizational culture can also be broken down into two types, an adaptive culture, that provides values and norms that contribute to moving an organization forward, allowing change and adaptation to achieve the goals that have been set forth. 180 degrees from that is the inept culture that fails to stimulate and inspire groups to achieve and in the long term leads to failure of that organization.

The second emphasis of this paper, strategic planning or planning is defined as “specifying the goals to be achieved and deciding in advance the appropriate actions needed to achieve those goals” (Bethel 2007). Strategic planning is at the heart of any organization, without it, an organization becomes stagnant and dies. It is how a business decides to move forward, its path and direction. It is where we want to be five years from now. Of the four functions of management, planning is the beginning to determine where organizing, leading and controlling become the pieces of the formal organization.

As part of the strategic planning process companies conduct analysis of its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) to aid in developing its plan. Organizational culture