ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY AS A FACTOR OF ITS COMPETITIVE ABILITY IN THE MARKET OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES

Abstract

The article analyzes the definitions of the organizational culture presented in the professional literature with in view of modern realities, when the university enters into a relationship of high competition in the market of educational services. It is shown that the organization culture of a modern university is a system of formal and informal socio-psychological regulators that perform a number of important functions – ideological, normative, imaginative, consolidated ones etc. All these regulators together are considered as an indicator of the status of the university and a factor of its competitiveness in the market of educational services. Among the important informal socio-psychological regulators of organizational culture of the modern university is social optimism. We consider social optimism as one of the “cross-cutting” socio-psychological factors in the development of the organization culture and an indicator of its quality. It is empirically studied that social optimism is connected with a number of indicators of the organization culture, including the psychological climate of the educational organization, the quality of the internal organization communications, the quality of the informative and business exchange, the organization of the educational process, the image and the symbols of the organization and some others. The main socio-psychological effects of social optimism are shown, which optimize the internal and external relations of the university and the performance of its functions. The results of the empirical study of students’ ideas about social optimism and the organization culture of their university are presented. It is shown that the studied phenomena of organizational culture are extremely important in the functioning of a modern university and require further scientific reflection.