Examining the Relationship between Organizational Culture and Internal Cohesion of the Employees Working in Golestan Telecommunication Company

The present study aims to examine the relationship between organizational culture and internal cohesion of the employees working in Golestan Telecommunication Company (GTC). The research enjoys an applied and correlational/descriptive method. Using stratified random sampling method, 92 employees working in GTC are selected. The research instruments are two questionnaires, one of them is based on Denison’s organizational culture model (Denison et al., 2005). And the other one is based on Captain and Olinew’s cohesion and integrity questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire points out that there is a significant relationship between organizational culture and its dimensions and internal cohesion, i.e., promoting organizational culture may cause an increase in the internal cohesion. Having depicted the scheme of organizational culture, GTC are found about average and above average in all four dimensions. It is noteworthy that GTC achieved the highest point in the Mission dimension and the lowest point in the Involvement dimension. Among the twelve indices, empowerment, objectives and vision are at the high level and other indices such as capability development and coordination received the lowest point.


INTRODUCTION
Organizational culture is values contributing to the organization affairs.It is also considered as underlying assumptions and beliefs common among organization members.Having considered the definition of culture, one can say that the main area in organizational culture is a set of understandings and meanings shared by members of an organization.There is a number of patterns in each organization including beliefs, symbols, mottos, stories and customs which have been developed over time.These patterns may cause a common understanding about what organization is and how organization members should behave (Alvani, 2006).Identity, values, beliefs and behavioral norms shared by members of organization cause cohesion and integrity in their attempts, organizational commitment, clear understanding of existential philosophy and consequently, organization success.In other words, considerable success of successful organizations lies in the strong intangible factors of their organizational culture, values and beliefs (Zahedi, 2002).Organizational culture is a set of values, beliefs, customs and habits which implicitly underpin individual, group and organizational behavior (Guidroz et al., 2009).In fact, organizational culture consists of beliefs, norms and habits formed in the unconscious mind of organization employees and overshadow employees' behavior.Norms and employees' working habits, mostly derived from society culture, are either constructive or prohibitive.In other words, "habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters" (Mirsepasi, 2009).One of the important skills of cultural managers is creating cultural cohesion and integrity in the organization and society.To do this, cultural managers need to strengthen society and organization's culture.To create a cultural cohesion in the society, two factors deserve great attention: • Increasing the number of people who believe in cultural and supreme values • Increasing the level and depth of commitment to cultural values (Soltani, 2009) Culture is assumed to be involved in the organization success and its duties are: • Internal cohesion • Coordinating activities and developing a strong common sense Therefore, organizational culture creates a common concept in the organization, according to which employees communicate with each other and understand their colleagues.If these two functions are not fully fulfilled, it may lead to a reduction in the organization efficiency (Sharifzadeh and Kazemi, 1998).Strong organizational culture causes employees show more bias towards their work and enjoy relatively considerable freedom and independence.Accordingly, individuals tend to be more innovative and creative in such a freedom and independent situation and collaboration and involvement are going on in these organizations.Consequently, organization performance, productivity and efficiency increase due to the involvement, collaboration, loyalty and cultural cohesion in the organization.Therefore, it is necessary to study the organizational culture of GTC to develop internal cohesion and increase employees' efficiency and productivity.The question raised here is how organizational culture and internal cohesion related to each other in GTC.
Organizational culture can be categorized from different perspectives.According to Denison, organizational cohesion can be divided into four parts:

Involvement:
Employees' responsibilities are improved and commitment to organization is institutionalized.
Consistency: Organization emphasizes the stability and control of employees' functions through policies and procedures.
Adaptability: Those norms and beliefs are accepted through which environmental signs are recognized and explained.
Mission: Organization tries to meet the environmental requirements, but is not forced to change quickly.Common perspectives are of great importance in this culture (Ghorashi, 2007).

Internal cohesion:
Cohesion is an inevitable, relative and voluntary category involving voluntary consultation, collaboration, coordination and participation of the citizens in performing duties such as various cultural, religious, social, economical and political issues they would face (Salehi, 2009).It is noteworthy that cohesion commonly implies coordination.Undoubtedly, one can think of groups of people who think they are inseparable.Sometimes, this term (i.e., inseparable) is used to refer to lovely couples and a group of friends as well as those organizations and groups which make good teams and are united.These characteristics implying "being tightly woven" are called cohesion.Cohesion is the degree of attraction felt by members towards their groups (Forist, 1994).
One of the important factors in keeping a group is staying together as well as studying eligibility (Teplitzly, 2009).One of the fundamental and essential tensions of each organization besides small firms is its independence and, coordination and internal cohesion as a whole.Levin (1986) believes that cohesion is the result of all forces causing coordination among group members and prevents its destruction (Ghorbani, 2009).

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND INTERNAL COHESION
Today's, public organizations are facing new challenges to adapt themselves to workforce change.To meet the 21 st century needs of their workforce, organizations will act multi-culturally and changes in organizational and operational structure are believed to have little effect on individual's performance.If governmental organizations tend to have efficient and motivated employees, their managers should learn attitudes, values and experiences of various groups of people as well as customers in the workplace.Today's, governmental and non-governmental organizations vary significantly with respect to workforce, rights of ethnic minorities, women's role and understanding cultural differences.Achieving efficient performance and organizational unity are required by the manager s of governmental organizations.Facing new problems, they often try to use past ideas and experiences while thoughtful managers understand themselves in relation with multicultural consequences (Sharifzadeh and Kazemi, 1998).
In fact, one of the most important concerns of managers is the way of coordinating organization's activities to achieve a common output as well as effective organization.Regarding market and product development, effective and pioneer enterprises end to employ greater number of employees with various expertise as well as different personality and ideas.The more this variation is, the more difficult and complex the coordination of these elements is.All theories and techniques focusing on "management of complex organizations" are developed to overcome these problems.
Applying culture implies cultural unification directed and established in all business functions and also shareholders' and customers' mind.Culture turns dispersed events into patterns and connects various parts of business to each other.When culture is tied to external shareholders such as customers and investor, it becomes company's brand.Custodians of human resources actively engaged in implementing culture examine the effect of culture on business and use this information to regulate culture.They use culture to unify various functions of business in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its arts.They also ensure that business culture is understood by external stakeholders including customers and investors.The critical issue here is to ensure whether the unique and unified culture of the organization in the mind of customers and stakeholders is consistent with organization identity.Any separation can have negative effect on the company's findings and human resource has to ensure that internal behavior of leader and employees is a proper reflection of the external image of the company (Olrish and Janson, 2009).In fact, organizational culture is a framework determining the employees' and managers' behavior and way of decision making and accordingly, they should try to achieve organizational goals.Indeed, organizational culture originates from culture.Culture should be coordinated with other parts of organization such as planning, organizing, leadership and controlling.If culture is not coordinated with these parts, there will be hard days ahead for the organization (Estoner and Gilbert, 2008).
Emphasizing the notion of organizational culture (an internal phenomenon penetrating various parts of organization), one may provide the best description of the relationships between functional units of the organization.Organizational culture can be defined as the pattern of behavior developed in an organization since organization gradually learns how to behave with external issues of environmental compatibility and integration of internal activities.It is also a pattern with proper performance and assumptions that are taught to new organizational members as a way of perceiving and even thinking and feeling (Fered and Deavid, 2008).
The goal of present study is to examine the relationship between organizational culture and internal cohesion of the employees working in GTC.Accordingly, the following hypotheses are developed: Main hypothesis: There is a significant relationship between organizational culture and internal cohesion of the employees working in GTC.

Secondary hypotheses:
• There is a significant relationship between involvement culture and internal cohesion of the employees working in GTC.• There is a significant relationship between consistency culture and internal cohesion of the employees working in GTC.• There is a significant relationship between adaptability culture and internal cohesion of the employees working in GTC.• There is a significant relationship between mission culture and internal cohesion of the employees working in GTC.

METHODOLOGY
The research enjoys an applied and correlational/descriptive method.Using stratified random sampling method, 92 employees working in GTC are selected.The research instruments are two questionnaires, one of them is based on Denison (2005) and the other one is based on Captain and Olinew's cohesion and integrity questionnaire.The reliability of the questionnaires is verified by Chronbach α and equals to 91 and 74%.Mean, Standard Deviation, correlation and regression are used to describe the data.Descriptive statistics is employed to describe the demographic characteristics (i.e., gender, education and experience) and research questionnaires.To determine the relationship between characteristics of organizational culture and those of internal cohesion, Pearson Test is used.Regression is also used to determine the effect of organizational culture indices on the internal cohesion.

Main hypothesis:
There is a significant relationship between organizational culture and internal cohesion.
As can be seen in Table 1, p value is lower than 0.05 and then, one can conclude that there is a significant relationship between these two variables at 95% level of significance.

Secondary hypotheses:
• There is a significant relationship between involvement culture and internal cohesion.
As indicated in Table 1, p value is lower than 0.05 and then, one can conclude that there is a significant relationship between these two variables at 95% level of significance.• There is a significant relationship between consistency culture and internal cohesion.Table 1 reveals that p value is lower than 0.05 and then, one can conclude that there is a significant relationship between these two variables at 95% level of significance.• There is a significant relationship between adaptability culture and internal cohesion.
As mentioned in Table 1, p value is lower than 0.05 and then, a significant relationship was found between these two variables at 95% level of significance.• There is a significant relationship between mission culture and internal cohesion.According to Table 2, GTC has achieved the highest score for mission (= 3.25) and the lowest score for involvement (= 3.16).Among indices, the highest score is due to empowerment (= 3.51) and the lowest one is for capability development.It is noteworthy that some indices including capability development (= 2.85) and coordination and cohesion (3.10) need to be improved.
The relationship among characteristics of organizational culture (four dimensions of organizational culture): Table 3, indicating the Pearson coefficient among four dimensions of organizational culture, suggest that there is a relative correlation among these dimensions.However, the highest correlation was found between adaptability and involvement (= 0.68).Regarding its significance at 5% level of significance, therefore, if organization has a clear understanding of developing its capability and goals, its internal cohesion and external adaptability will increase.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Organizational culture must be constantly paid attention to remain strong and alive, move with respect to conditions and is kept on the right, efficient and useful track.Since the pace of change has accelerated in today's world, competition and cultural invasion has become a norm, intelligent managers know that they cannot wait until environmental forces take their culture in any directions.Considering the systematic approach and analysis of requirements in the course of cultural management, nevertheless, managers aim to create logical culture to affect their effective employees constantly and always retain their effectiveness for organization.One may expect the same thing from high rank managers.Therefore, this research suggests that continual programs are developed to inform employees from numerous benefits of internal cohesion to promote organization and improve its performance.Since one of the important factors in organizational culture management is managers' actions, especially high rank managers' resulting in a general consensus about values, dimensions and organizational objectives, it is suggested that manager s pay close attention to employees' involvement, reinforcing a sense of responsibility, using an appropriate performance appraisal system as well as choosing competent managers and entrusting them.
Having confirmed research main hypothesis, this study suggests that GTC creates a number of common interests or mutual satisfaction, common values, similar characteristics, behavioral and social norms, competition, reducing the high transportation of the group members and difficult acceptance to eventually strengthen cohesion among employees.Regarding the significant relationship was found among the characteristics of organizational culture in GTC and the fact that improving one may result in linear improvement of the other one, it is recommended that all characteristics and indices should be paid close attention and pave the way for creating a strong culture in the organization to increase the internal cohesion, improve organizational performance, productivity and employees' job satisfaction.

Table 1 :
Pearson correlation coefficient between characteristics of organizational culture and those of internal cohesion Statistics

Table 2 :
Total score of the organization for main dimensions and indices