I came across an informative article published by Harvard Business Review. It talks about organizational culture and its role. The author, Lindsay McGregor, came up with a statement saying “Why we work determines how well we work.” This statement caused me to read the article in detail to understand it.

She starts off the article with three questions that transform’s culture from mystery to science:1). How does culture drive performance? 2). What is the culture worth? 3). What processes in an organization affect culture? After a study in 2013, research showed that there are 6 main reasons why people work: play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. The first three are the positive and competitive forces that act directly on the workforce. The other three are the indirect forces that reduce’ the overall performance culture in an organization.

The 3 P’s (play, purpose, potential) are important for a healthy organization because they make work enjoyable, help you to value your work and enhance your work identity respectively. A highly-performing culture will have more influence on these three characteristics and minimal influence of the indirect forces namely the emotional pressure, economic and finally inertia. The latter three forces contribute to the reduction of performance level in the organization by inducing thoughts such as thinking about the disappointment, or the reward, or why you’re bothering to do the work at all. An experiment conducted by Teresa Amiable, Harvard student says that these factors affect individual in their work as well as their progress. These observations and conclusions creating a theory called Total Motivation (ToMo).

Organizational Culture was a mystery to people and they did not understand what is meant by healthy culture and how it could be developed?Here is the solution. Due to intensive research studies, we have proven that healthy motivation has been the base for a high-profile culture in an organisation. It is proven that highest performing portfolio managers have a higher total motivation (ToMo), so if these 6 forces are directed into proper channels, a great culture is easy to build. Organizational Culture is a set of processes that is influenced by mission and behaviour codes regulated by the motivation of the organisation.

To sum up, motivation is closely related to the shaping of organizational culture and behaviour.It maintains the identity and career ladder of the employees as well as the organization.

Reference :

https://hbr.org/2015/11/how-company-culture-shapes-employee-motivation