Organisational culture is the shared pattern of assumptions, values and everyday practices that shapes how people work together. It influences what an organisation treats as normal, important or acceptable.
In businesses, it is often called corporate culture. The idea also applies to charities, public bodies and other groups. Shared does not mean that every member agrees, or that every department behaves identically.
What can we see, and what lies beneath?
Edgar Schein’s model distinguishes three levels. Artefacts are observable features, such as meeting routines, language and office arrangements. Espoused values are the priorities an organisation says it holds. Underlying assumptions are beliefs that members have come to take for granted.
The model, explained in Organizational Culture and Leadership, also cautions that visible signs can be difficult to interpret. An open-plan office, for example, does not establish that employees feel able to challenge decisions.
A mission statement can describe an aspiration. Understanding the culture also involves considering what people repeatedly do, what is rewarded and how decisions are made.
An example of stated values and actual practice
Imagine a fictional customer-support team whose published message says that customer service comes first. Managers nevertheless reward only the number of calls closed quickly, while ignoring whether customers’ problems are resolved.
Staff may learn that speed matters more than resolution, even though the written message says otherwise. This illustrates how incentives and repeated experience can convey a different priority from an official statement.
One rushed conversation would not establish the team’s culture. The example concerns a repeated pattern, and it does not describe any named company.
How does a culture develop?
Founders, leaders, colleagues and past experience can all influence it. Ways of solving problems may become familiar routines and eventually assumptions about how work should be done.
Harvard Business School Online’s explanation describes how shared assumptions develop as groups solve problems together. Such assumptions can persist after the conditions that first produced them have changed.
Leaders influence culture through decisions, attention and rewards, but culture is not simply an instruction from the top. Established expectations and professional practices can also shape how a new leader is received.
What are power, role, task and person cultures?
These are four patterns associated with Charles Handy. The AQA teaching guide to Handy’s model describes their different sources of authority and ways of organising work.
Power culture centres influence on a key person or small group. Role culture relies more on defined positions, rules and responsibilities.
Task culture brings skills together around projects or problems. Person culture allows considerable independence to individual specialists. It does not simply mean that a business cares about its employees.
These are analytical categories, rather than four boxes into which every organisation fits neatly. They should not be mixed with labels from other models as though there were one universal classification.
Can one organisation have several cultures?
Yes. Different occupations, departments, locations or teams may develop subcultures. A research group and a customer-service operation, for example, can work within the same organisation while having different routines and expectations.
OpenStax discusses these differences within larger organisations. A widely shared culture is not automatically a healthy one: the effects depend on what is shared and how it relates to the work.
Can organisational culture change?
Culture can change as membership, leadership, incentives, work practices and circumstances change. Announcing a new slogan does not establish that deeper assumptions have changed.
Employees may interpret the same change differently. A culture can support coordination in one setting while making adaptation harder in another, so there is no single pattern that guarantees success.
Last checked and updated on November 3, 2026 by the MBN editorial team.