An analysis of the culture of an organization the UK conservative party

6 Organizational culture of the conservative party 7 Brexit 8 Brexit and Conservative Party’s organization culture 9 Conclusion 11 References 12 An Analysis of the Culture of an Organization: The U. K Conservative Party Back ground of the Organization The U. K conservative party, originally known as the tory party up to 1830, is a major contemporary party and one of the oldest parties in the U. K, with its origin dating back to the seventeen century (Cooke, 2008). According to Cooke, the first conservative majority government in the U. May has been among the reformers advocating for modern conservative party. The conservative party strongly upholds the traditional conservative culture of the British politics as the oldest and the major right wing party in the United Kingdom. Similar to other conservatives’ parties across the world, the conservative party does not support change from the existing tradition and culture, unless there is a significant need for change (Pitchford, 2011).

 The party promotes economic policies which favour free market and liberal policies, such are advocating for reduced business tax rates income taxes for the low and middle income earning class. These policies are aimed encouraging economic activity hence increasing the GDP to keep the economy growing. Schein notes that culture can be identified as an idealized system, focusing on rules, values, beliefs, knowledge and expressive forms (Bitsani, 2013). It is culture that influences individuals to act in a specific manner, which is acceptable to other members of a similar group. Schein’s model provides an explanation for the processes and interactions within an organization and how it strongly affects members attached to the organizations by influencing their norms and values. Another model which is applicable in analyzing organizational culture is the Trompenaars seven dimensions model.

The model is based on three key principles which include relationship to others, relationship to time and relationship to the environment. Therefore, although no model can adequately address the cultural aspects related to a specific event or issue, the appropriate model for analyzing the United Kingdom conservative party is the Schein’s model, as it covers the most wide range of factors, which are essential in examining the impact and response of the party to the Brexit issues. Application of the Schein model of organization culture on the U. K Conservative party Schein model and organizational culture. Schein model lays more emphasis the unconscious and invisible power and impact of culture as its most powerful aspect. According to Schein, understudying the influence of culture to a group or an organization can be compared to the influence of personality to an individual.

The third level is basic underlying assumptions which is intangible and the deepest layer. Although most of the members of an organization take this layer for granted, it is the core layer which influences an organization culture change. It only through this three layers that an organization culture can be changed or changes. Schein’s models also represents organization cultures life cycle, which include the early or foundation stages, the midlife stage and the maturity stage in a natural change process. The foundation or early stage is the culture established by the founders of the organization. Polices promoted by the party include deductions in governments extravagant spending on generous social services. A series of defeats in the 20th century forced the party to adopt fundamental change to fit to the rapidly changing political and society environment in the United Kingdom.

Currently, since 2010 and with the growth of the social media, the party has utilized social media for civic enjoyment which shows that that the conservative party has undergone significant change. Under the leadership of the David Cameron, he set to modernize the party’s culture and reform the party’s long standing extreme right policies. In addition, the party reformed its image from being a party of the a few elite and rich party to a party of the ordinary majority (Ridge-Newman, 2015). Their major argument was that by remaining in the EU, the U. K benefited more in economy due to its access to the EU market which have a significant impact in the country’s economy. However, according to Lambert (2016) major issues such as immigration and the need for U.

K to regain power in decision making for critical national policies without being tied to EU institutions influenced the results of the Referendum, convincing a large part of the electorate to vote for U. K to leave EU against the conservative party stand to remain with 52% voting for leave and 48% voting for staying. The vote was also a major cause for the cultural divide not within the party but within the larger country at large as well. Therefore, the major blame is to the conservative government that called for the referendum, especially as a result of the negative consequences of Brexit to the U. K’s economy. Therefore, the major consequence for Brexit is the lack of confidence by its supporters to manage policy issues and also fueling internal party divisions, which has led to the loss of a critical vote for the party leader and Prime Minister Theresa May that could have given her an upper hand in Brexit negotiations (Dorey, 2017).

Consequently, the failure of the Brexit and its impact on the economy shows that it was such a risky move the conservative party, and has largely shaped the opinion of the public and the supporters in managing important governing issues. The ideas, goals and values which have influenced the organizational cultural change in conservative party as aims and the strategies, employed by the party leadership to reform the party, and not visible to the outside environment. There are also basic underlying assumptions, which is the deepest layer of organizational cultural change that is largely ignored, but has a significant influence in the overall cultural change process. For an organization cultural change to be successful, it must monitor the conflicts between the espoused values and the visible artefacts so as to take appropriate actions to coordinate the three layers in order to achieve successful change.

According to the model, the party organizational culture has gone through a sequence of stages, from the founding stage when it was first established centuries ago, to maturity through the 19th and the 20th century and now it’s in the decline stage where the values and norms which defined the party’s conservative culture are changing significantly as witnessed with the reforms recently introduced to the party. This is essential to help the party cope with the rapidly changing modern British political environment.  Theresa May: The UK's prime minister.  BBC News. Retrieved 5 January 2018, from http://www. bbc. com/news/uk-politics-36660372 Bitsani, E.  Politics and Governance, 5(2). Hollis, C. The Conservative Party in History.  The Political Quarterly, 32(3), 214-228. Kong, S. html Lindholm, K.