The Impact of Organisational Culture on Performance of Educational Institutions

Abstract

Every organization has a culture-good or bad. However there is more to a good culture than happy staff. In order to aid long-term performance, there are three main criteria needed to develop a suitable culture: It must be strategically relevant; it needs to be strong in order that people care about what is important; and the culture must have an intrinsic ability to adapt to changing circumstances Culture impacts most aspects of organizational life, such as how decisions are made, who makes them, how rewards are distributed, who is promoted, how people are treated, how the organization responds to its environment, and so on. Culture influences people’s attitudes and behavior at work. Culture is clearly an important ingredient of effective institutional performance. There is a close relationship between an organization’s culture and its performance. The survival of any organization solely rest on its effectiveness and efficiency in utilizing the resources supplied by tax payers in serving her constituency. Amidst hard economic times and the stiff competition evidenced in the education sector in the twenty first century, any institution that endavours to survive must justify its existence through its performance. Numerous factors influence the ultimate performance of any education institution. One among these factors is the prevailing culture of an institution. However, very few institutional managers realise the weight that a culture of an institution has on its performance. This paper explores what is entailed in an institutional culture,measurement of an institutional culture, measurement of an institutional performance and the effect of an institutional culture on its performance.