Workplace culture can be defined as the sum total of the visible behavioral and cultural characteristics of a business venture, based upon personal communication. On the other side, education is expected to equip an individual to be a leader or a follower. When this idea is superimposed into the scenario of workplace culture, education can positively or negatively influence workplace culture. Let us explore how education can influence workplace culture and affect the same.
‘Square Peg’ Effect
Imagine that an electronic engineer is hired by an MNC for marketing purposes due to the lack of MBA Graduates. One can see that technical know-how, prior experience in the field, and leadership quality are essential for a marketing manager. In the aforementioned case, one can see that it may be difficult for an electronic engineer to get acquainted with the technical aspects of marketing. Besides, both the streams of knowledge (Electronic Engineering and MBA) are different, and there is a high probability for an electronic engineer to be a square peg within marketing. So, one can see that higher education in one stream of knowledge and its application in another scenario may prove wrong.
Ego and self-centeredness
Workplace culture determines the effective functioning of a business because the employees and the employer are responsible to accept the same. Within this context, there is no space for ego and self-centeredness. Still, some employees with high paychecks may feel that they have some special rights and power to exert upon other employees with a low profile. To be specific, in certain conditions, education cannot civilize an individual’s inherent character and related behavior towards others. This sort of egotistic and self-centered attitude from an educated person can result in workplace harassment and related ill-treatment. It is hard to meet the demands and satisfy an employee with ego and self-centered attitude. Besides, this proves that education cannot help certain individuals to be democratic in workplaces.
Traditionalism v/s Modernity
Most ventures based upon family business tend to choose and follow traditional mode of workplace culture. This happens due to the fact that head of the family will be the mastermind behind most family business ventures. When the members from younger generation take over the control over a family business, their high scope for the effort to incorporate modernity into the core of the business. Here, there is scope for the Cold War between traditionalism and modernity. One can see that traditional attitude in business is based on traditional education and the effort to inculcate modernity within the business is based upon modern education. Still, it is difficult to prove that modern education affects the smooth functioning of workplace culture, but its influence can result in far-reaching consequences.
So, education can boost up self-confidence of employees because the ultimate aim of the same is to help individuals to be self-sufficient in all aspects. Within this scenario, we can expect that a well-educated employee will be ready to accept the workplace culture of the company in which he/she is serving. But lack of proper training and hesitation to accept change in certain circumstances can affect the smooth functioning of workplace culture in general. In direct sense, education exerts a positive influence upon workplace culture, but in some odd situations, improper education can affect workplace culture in general.
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- How Does Education Affect the Workplace Culture? - June 17, 2018
