Perceived Dimensions of Societal and Organizational Cultures and their Impact on Managerial Work Behavior

The present study aims at understanding the impact of societal and organizational culture on a manager’s work-related thoughts and feelings through threefold research issues: (1) Manager’s perceived dimensions of organizational and societal cultures, (2) the impact of societal culture on organizational culture and (3) their combined influence on a manager’s work behavior. The overall findings of the study related to societal beliefs, preferences and practices suggest that people believe corruption to be prevalent and pervading in society. They think that powerful people are generally corrupt and can get away with anything. As a result, common people can not expect to get their due. Generally, those people are respected who enjoy power and status in society. The trend, with respect to organizational belief, preferences and practices indicated that organizations believe in profit and ruthless competition but at the same time they are socially responsible and therefore believe that people working on the machines are more important than the machines. On the whole, the findings of the study indicated that the spillover of societal culture on organizational culture influenced the work behavior of managers.