Executive Summary
This paper offers a thorough analysis of the organizational culture practiced by Telstra and concludes that it plays a crucial role in the behavioral aspects and success of this organization. The company has developed a very open and employee-friendly culture that promotes collaboration to achieve shared goals while also catering to the individual needs and requirements of each employee. It is in fact, a cooperative and outcome-oriented culture due to which Telstra is able to take quantifiable risks, make continuous advancements, and attain optimal staff performance for the higher organizational outcomes.
Introduction
Today, the term “organizational culture” is drawing a lot of attention and interest from the perspective of organizational theory. In this context, it is often said that the culture of an organization is easy to sense but hard to measure and that it has the potential to undermine or catalyze organizational success (Elsbach and Stigliani 2018). Based on these views, this report aims to prepare an organizational cultural analysis report on ‘Telstra’, which is the largest telecommunication company in Australia (Telstra 2022). Telstra is chosen purposively for this work because of the fact that it forms a part of the global telecommunication industry which is very competitive and is witnessing huge transformations every other day. Thus, determining and evaluating the culture of this organization using seven organizational characteristics becomes important to understand how cultural aspects find their role in dictating the behavior within the organization. By doing so, it will become easier to understand how organizational culture finds its role in the present-day scenario where the traditional organizational concept is diminishing.
Evaluation of organizational culture
This section of the report outlines and evaluates the seven key characteristics of the chosen organization to first grasp a better understanding of the culture that it follows.
Organizational Overview
“Telstra” is the leading Australian communication and technology organization that offers a complete range of internet and communication services all across Australia. The company employs over 27,000 employees to provide its services to more than 18 million Australian retail consumers (Telstra 2022). This organization treats its employees as the key catalyst for giving purpose to this company. This is primarily why Telstra aspires to create a connected future for humanity where everyone can thrive.
Evaluation of organizational culture in Telstra
The culture of an organization relates to the purpose, values, expectations, and objectives of its business and employees. In this way, the culture of the chosen organization can be better understood by using the 7-key characteristics symbolizing different operational and service aspects. The list provided below describes the culture using 7 characteristics which are based on the theory of organizational culture.
- Innovation & risk-taking: For a large technology firm like Telstra, embracing innovation has always been at the center to beat the competition in the communication industry and offer improved products and services to customers. The company is emphasizing R&D activities to innovate and deploy 5G technology and services for its consumers in Australia (Telstra Career 2022). Besides, it is also making huge investments in emerging technologies such as “Artificial Intelligence” (AI), “The Internet of Things” (IoT), Mixed Reality, deep learning, etc. to improve its network capacity and provide seamless data and communication services to its customers.
- Attention to detail: The extent to which accuracy in work is demanded of workers is determined by this aspect of organizational culture (Sihombing et al. 2018). Telstra as an organization is operating in the communication technology industry where it is routinely involved in the development of wireless applications, a wealth of communication technology and framework, developer guidelines, etc., which requires a higher degree of precision. Therefore, the company expects all its employees to be precision oriented and maintain the utmost accuracy in their work.
- Outcome orientation: It is the approach that emphasizes the idea of achieving results by making employees and managers accountable for their work. Telstra is operating in the telecommunication industry which is highly competitive and customer-oriented (Madsen and De Percy 2020); therefore, the company has developed an outcome-oriented organizational culture and practices. However, Telstra also emphasizes the process in their quest to achieve greater business outcomes. For example, the company Telstra uses procedures that recognize individual and collective achievement, and it holds managers & employees alike accountable for projects and targets without tying performance incentives and benefits to seniority levels (Telstra Exchange 2022). The company has also short-term and long-term incentive plans for its employees apart from other financial perks to hold them more loyal towards their responsibilities and give their best to achieving organizational goals.
- People orientation: It is the culture that promotes mutual respect between employees, and employees easily relate with each other and are fairly treated in all aspects of their employment (Groysberg et al. 2018). Telstra recognizes the significance of people-oriented culture and thus, it has always embraced such a culture where leaders can actually listen to employees, value their opinions and views, maintain an active conversation, and involve them in decision-making so that employees can actually feel being an important “cog” and that they are a valuable resource to the company. The company Telstra uses this culture as a strategic measure to keep employees satisfied and motivated so that they can stick around & contribute their best to the company.
- Team orientation: Telstra as an organization is aiming to transform itself from just a telecommunication service provider to a future-focussed technology firm. Accordingly, the company has also transformed its workplace to make it more diverse and value teamwork and collaboration (Telstra Exchange 2022). Higher levels of collaboration among employees are enabling the company to work for a common business goal and gain a sustainable competitive advantage.
- Aggressiveness: This characteristic determines whether or not the employee is expected to use aggression while dealing with competitors. Outperforming competition is indeed a key objective for Telstra however, it refrains away from outperforming the competition at all costs such as practices that may damage its reputation, affect the work-life balance of employees, etc. Rather, the company is more focused on achieving continual improvement of its performance and service to beat the competition (Haeruddin et al. 2020).
- Stability: An organization that values stability is usually more rule- and administrative-focused. Instead of emphasizing on growth, they concentrate more on preserving their products and procedures. However, operating in the telecom industry does not come with those leverages and Telstra has to continuously make improvements to technology as well as product and service offerings to keep growing in the highly competitive and volatile market.
Impact of organizational culture on behavior
The phenomena of organizational culture and subsequent behavior seem to be taking on a greater significance in the present-day context. As opined by Low, Abdul-Rahman, and Zakaria (2020) there are several ways that culture affects an organization. First of all, it provides organizations' identities, which implies that it establishes boundaries between organizations and their people. Further, culture has the power to elevate personal interests to something more in line with organizational objectives. Additionally, culture also has its role in influencing organizational structure since it controls employee conduct by establishing suitable norms (Paris and Pattiruhu 2020). Because of all these reasons, culture is widely used as a behavioral mechanism to dictate behavior in the organization. Accordingly, the impact of organizational culture on behavior can be seen in six major aspects as discussed below.
- Power distance: It is the first aspect that represents disparity in terms of the centralization of power in the organization (Lam and Xu 2019). In general, some of the employees usually have more authority and say in the organization than others. In the context of Telstra, the shared working culture enables the company to maintain a small power-distance condition between top-level executives and general employees. This culture also enables the company to operate with a decentralized system where each employee considers themselves equal within the organizational hierarchy. The company has also vested key decision-making and management powers with its top officials. However, there is a general practice of hearing the voices of general employees on matters concerning employees so that they can feel valued and heard.
- Individualism & collectivism: This aspect reflects the expectation of an organization in terms of how employees operate and function within the organization. As discussed earlier as well, the company is people and team-oriented and thus, instead of individualistic culture promoting individual goals and interests, Telstra adores a collectivist culture in which employees are seen as a part of the group (Telstra 2022). Accordingly, the interests of the group/organization they work for often override the self-interests of individual workers.
- Uncertainty avoidance: The Company is operating in the ever-changing telecom industry and nobody can know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Because of this reason, the company has developed a culture and operational framework which promotes innovation and risk-taking in a controlled manner to stay ahead of the competition (Haeruddin et al. 2020). As discussed earlier as well, Telstra also emphasizes the process while striving for outcomes, and thus, it brings a sense of stability to the organization while dealing with low-uncertainty avoidance culture.
- Gender roles within the organization: It is often seen that some organizations are predominantly male or female in terms of power relations, cultural values, and gender roles. When it comes to Telstra, the company places equal importance on both genders, and thus, gender-neutral job roles are structured within the organization and there is a greater emphasis on job performance, growth, and achievement than any individual interest (Maalsen, Wolfson, and Dowling 2022).
- Business orientation: Long-term orientation is another aspect that is greatly influenced by organizational culture. Telstra is operating in a technology-driven industry that is witnessing abrupt changes and nothing can be predicted about the future. In these circumstances, long-term orientation enables the company to keep its focus on the future, and pay more attention to continuous training and learning so as to keep the organization and its employees prepared for future challenges (Ayoko and Ashkanasy 2019). Besides, the culture of innovation and learning also creates a working environment that encourages differences, inspires innovation, and also tolerates failures. Innovation has, in fact, become the survival guide for Telstra.
- Indulgence & restraint: Usually all organizations have a standard set of rules & regulations to guide employees' conduct within the organization. Some organizations use these norms to restrain the behavior and action of their employees. However, as discussed earlier, Telstra promotes a team-oriented culture where the company puts greater faith and trust in its employees, and thus, it provides greater flexibility and freedom to their human drives so that they can enjoy their work, be more creative and feel the responsibility.
From the analysis presented above, it has become evident that Telstra offers a positive organizational culture to its employees. This culture, apart from healthy organizational development, also mobilizes employees’ performance as a team and enables them to work with greater passion and enthusiasm and the continual success of Telstra over a period is the most prominent example of it.
Conclusion
This report provides a comprehensive evaluation of the organizational culture followed by Telstra, which is a leading Australian telecommunication organization. The report further finds that organizational culture has a very positive role and influence on the success of this organization. It is the cooperative and outcome-oriented culture that enables this organization to take measurable risks, makes continual improvements, and achieve optimum employee performance for the greater organizational outcome.
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