In the past several decades, some organizational researchers and managers have used it to describe the norms and practices that organizations develop around their handling of people or as the espoused values and credo of an organization. This sometimes confuses the concept of culture with the concept of climate, and confuses culture as what is with culture as -what ought to be.
Thus managers speak of developing the “right kind of culture,” a “culture of quality,” or a “culture of customer service,” suggesting that culture has to do with certain values that managers are trying to inculcate in their organizations. Also implied in this usage is the assumption that there are better or worse cultures, stronger or weaker cultures, and that the “right” kind of culture would influence how effective organizations are. In the managerial literature, there is often the implication that having a culture is necessary for effective performance and that the stronger the culture, the more effective the organization.