Which aspects of organizational culture are important to employees in determining their level of work
performance?
2. Literature Review
Organizational culture is conceptualized as shared beliefs and values within the organization that helps to shape
the behavior patterns of employees (Kotter and Heskett, 1992). Gordon and Cummins (1979) define organization
culture as the drive that recognizes the efforts and contributions of the organizational members and provides
holistic understanding of what and how is to be achieved, how goals are interrelated, and how each employee
could attain goals. Hosftede (1980: 25) summarizes organization culture as collective process of the mind that
differentiates the members of one group from the other one. Thus the above concept asserts that organizational
culture could be the means of keeping employees in line and exhilarating them towards organizational objectives.
Early organization behavior researchers (Peters and Waterman, 1982; Deal and Kennedy, 1982; and Pascale and
Athos, 1981) find the unambiguous links between culture and organizational performance. These cultural values
are consistent with organizational chosen strategies that led to successful organizations. Although the
relationships between organizational culture and employee performance have been widely accepted, some
researchers (Willmott, 1993; Legge, 1994; and Ogbonna, 1993) raise concerns about the relations. Thus Gordon
and DiTomaso (1992) and Denison (1990) argue that culture characteristics might affect performance but
restricted or conditioned to the specific context. They further argue that culture may lead to higher performance
if it fits with changes of environmental factors within the context. Recently, researchers argue that cultural traits
cannot be copied and therefore it could be source of organizational sustainability. Resource-based view (Barney,
1986 and 1991) suggests that sustainability depends on the values, rarity and sustainability of the culture
concerned. Overall, the aim of the literature review is to examine the existing research to explore the links
between culture and performance.