As A. Grün states: “A good company today attaches great importance to how customers are treated and the style of interpersonal contacts cultivated internally. this belongs to the company culture (….). It is influenced by (…) interpersonal habits, for example, joint excursions, celebrating birthdays or exams passed, the way breaks are organized, etc. Employees immediately perceive whether the payment for their work is only money, or whether what matters is how they feel about it.”

The phenomenon of organizational culture (in the early 1940s) was pointed out by E. Mayo – an American sociologist and professor at Harvard University. He noted that when working, the most important factor in productivity is not payment, but the recognition and attention given to the employee by the director. He also described the formation of informal groups in an organization, stating that these groups influence group mentality and work culture. Culture is formed in a collective, characterized by shared habits, and regularity in performing certain activities, and tasks.

Culture is the personality of a particular organization that distinguishes it from its surroundings and allows it to find its way. The culture that is created is very dynamic, and active, although it is not always created intentionally. It directly influences the formation of linguistic patterns and categories in its members and indirectly influences their behavior. It undergoes change and transformation through human action, while at the same time influencing the mental processes and behavior of cultural participants. Thus, in companies, it is the people within them who contribute to the structures of the culture, its successes but also its limitations.

Organizational culture is:

• the totality of the fundamental assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered or

created by learning to adapt to the environment and integrate internally,

• the unwritten, often subconsciously observed rules that bridge the gap

between what is written and what happens.

Culture is thus a process that is happening all the time – which it is not. It constitutes a kind of climate, it is the ideology of the organization. In a way, it organizes actions, and processes, and gives certain shared meanings. Culture allows people to act together, that is, both to do things together and to talk to each other.20 However, regardless of the different understandings of culture, of the different strands, there are some recurring characteristics of how organizational culture functions.

We can include:

• a shared adherence to beliefs that influence perceptions of one’s

organization,

• the pervasiveness of culture in the day-to-day running of the company,

• the phenomenon of teamwork,

• uniform and coherent organization of the individual’s activities,

• learning through exposure to the problems of the external and internal environment,

• continuity of processes and their regular formation,

• the awareness of adopting a culture that is encountered in every

points of the organization,

• implementation of patterns in the organization’s operations, programs defining

employee profiles.

The organization’s culture also fulfills a creative function concerning employees, and influences their character traits, in particular:

• perpetuates a sense of integration into the company,
• perpetuates a sense of responsibility for the tasks carried out,
• strengthens the emotional bonds between employees,
• perpetuates the work ethos,
• strengthens the sense of duty and responsibility in general,
• fosters a sense of belonging to a team, a group.