This chapter explores the mediating role of organizational culture on managerial internal career needs and career values in small third sector social enterprises. Organizational culture refers to a set of basic assumptions in an organization such as symbols, artefacts, attitudes, and behavior as the way in which things are done in the organization. These assumptions are maintained in the continuous process of interaction in the organization. Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines and boundaries for the career management of members of the organization. Understanding the career needs and career values of managers helps organizations to develop strategies to retain quality managers which will enable them to deliver and fulfil performance accountability requirements associated with delivering public services.
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This chapter seeks to contribute to our understanding of the influence of organizational culture on managerial internal career needs and career values in small third sector social enterprise organizations. Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines and boundaries for the career management of employees. Despite changes in career structures in the 21st Century, for example, the growing number of self-employment and contract work, etc. Majority of career still takes place in organizations (Baruch, 2004; Li et al., 2017, Maher, 2018), including small social enterprises (Maher, 2015b, Maher, 2019). Therefore, the importance of understanding the influence or organizational culture on the internal career needs and career value of managers who manage and develop small social enterprise organization’s activities is vital.
The concept of organizational culture was eluded as early as the Hawthorne studies in 1920’s which described work group culture and the influence of the social, physical and psychological environment on workers. However, organizational culture gained momentum in the early 1970’s when academics and researchers began to examine the key to organizations thriving in turbulent comparative times. In the 1980, Peters and Waterman (1982) argued that there are a number of common characteristics which are not policies or work practices but rather aspects of organizational culture. Schein (1985) defines organizational culture as the construction and negotiation of values and meanings as expressed through organizational artifacts, motivations, and behaviours. Other definitions of organizational culture often refer to ‘the way we do things around here’ (Lundy and Cowling, 1996). Lundy and Cowling (1996) contend that organizational culture is defined as the deeply rooted (often subconscious) values and beliefs shared by individuals in the organization’ or ‘the commonly held values and beliefs held within an organization’. Alvesson (2003), argues that organizational culture as ‘constellation of implicit and emergent symbols, beliefs, values, behavioural norms and ways of working that shape and are shaped by individual and corporate actions and reflect underlying assumptions about social reality’.