The Impact of Organizational Culture on Success
Last Updated March 28, 2024
An organization’s culture is responsible for creating the kind of environment in which the business is managed, and has a major impact on its ultimate success or failure. This is as true for the hospitality industry as it is for any other, perhaps even more so.
In an interview on the business and culture of hospitality, restaurateur Danny Meyer, formerly of New York’s Union Square Hospitality Group, said a successful culture goes beyond mere service. Instead, it’s all about making people want to go back once they’ve left because they truly feel they’re wanted back. He believes that it’s about happiness and bringing people together who are happiest when they make others happy.
Understanding Organizational Culture and It’s Benefits
As culture is created and managed, the goal should be to bring together the values, vision, and mission of the organization and articulate them appropriately to all staff members. When cultivated thoroughly throughout the organization, the company culture can serve as a catalyst to help guide the behavior that employees exhibit toward each other. At the same time, it can foster more pleasant behavior toward guests and vendors, creating a positive environment that guests will want to experience over and over again.
Culture is defined as a basic set of understandings that are shared by members of an organization that influence decision-making and are shared and passed on to new members of the organization.
On top of the expressed values, vision, and mission, organizational culture is all about the collective beliefs, ethics, and behavior that comprises the fabric of the business. It’s more about a feeling that is created than specific programs that are put into place. It’s affected by the way that the organization is led and is hugely influential in the organization’s success.
Organizational Culture in the Hospitality Industry
The best hospitability organizations have a quality culture, one that’s guided by the belief that bottom line performance takes care of itself when everyone in the organization is committed to and practices managing for quality. This emphasis requires understanding what customers want and delivering against it by minimizing and eliminating perceived hassles, problems, and deficiencies.
Hospitality organizations that create an environment for establishing and maintaining quality culture are long-term survivors. The culture creates the environment in the organization and influences the nature of the long-term plans that move the organization toward its vision. Culture also dictates the policies and processes that enable the organization to live its mission every day. By pulling all these elements together under the umbrella of the organization’s culture, business success becomes inevitable.
