Culture is the conventional behavior of a society that encompasses beliefs, customs, knowledge, and practices. It influences human behavior, even though it seldom enters into their conscious thought. People depend on culture as it gives them stability, security, understanding, and the ability to respond to a given situation. This is why people fear change. They fear the system will become unstable, their security will be lost, they will not understand the new process, and they will now know how to respond to the new situations.

Individualization is when employees successfully exert influence on the social system by challenging the culture.

The chart above shows how individualization affects different organizations:

• Too little socialization and too little individualization create isolation.
• Too high socialization and too little individualization create conformity.
• Too little socialization and too high individualization create rebellion.
• While the match that organizations want to create is high socialization and high individualization for a creative environment. This is what it takes to survive in a very competitive environment… having people grow with the organization, but doing the right thing when others want to follow the easy path.

This can become quite a balancing act. Individualism favors individual rights, loosely knit social networks, self-respect, and personal rewards and careers. It becomes look out for number 1! Socialization or collectivism favors the group, harmony, and asks, “What is best for the organization?” Organizations need people to challenge, question, and experiment while still maintaining the culture that binds them into a social system.

 
Organization Development     

Organization Development (OD) is the systematic application of behavioral science knowledge of various levels, such as group, inter-group, organization, etc., to bring about planned change. Its objectives are a higher quality of work-life, productivity, adaptability, and effectiveness. It accomplishes this by changing attitudes, behaviors, values, strategies, procedures, and structures so that the organization can adapt to competitive actions, technological advances, and the fast pace of change within the environment.

There are seven characteristics of OD:

·         Humanistic Values: Positive beliefs about the potential of employees (McGregor’s Theory Y).

·         Systems Orientation: All parts of the organization, to include structure, technology, and people, must work together.