Organizational Development: Understanding Corporate Culture

This report delves into the significance of corporate culture in fostering organizational agility and financial success. It highlights the importance for potential employees to understand a firm's culture to ensure a mutually beneficial fit, leading to professional growth. The report discusses how corporate...Read More

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The corporate culture
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R AD R rganizational developmentUNNING HE E : O
The corporate culture
Abstract
The company executives requires to properly evaluate, identify, and influence the
organization culture in order to enable corporate agility and high financial success. As a
prospective potential worker in an organization, understanding the true culture of the firm
will ensure that one makes an informed decision on whether the firm meets the requirements.
This will contribute to the high standards set for employees to flourish professionally
(Alvesson & Berg, 2011). Corporate culture has gross and subtle manifestations that arise to
give clues about the underlying norms, values, and beliefs. The key participants should pay
attention to the conducive work environment, communication channels, and humor level in
an organization so as to offer a detailed hint of the dominant company culture. Proper
identification and understanding of such aspects are significant as they affect large-scale
changes and alternatives in response to target market imperatives.
Introduction
Basically, corporate culture is the personality of a company: the individual or group
values, perceptions, behavioral characteristics and shared beliefs. It is symbolic, holistic and
stable in nature.
This involves the beliefs and behaviors that indicate how an organization's employees
and top management interact and enable outside important business transactions to be carried
out. Mostly corporate culture develops periodically and comprehensively over time as a result
of various cumulative traits of the employees that the firm hires (Cameron & Quinn,2011). A
company culture will be determined by through different workers dress code, business hours,
office layout, worker's benefits, turnover ratio, hiring informed decisions and customer
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treatment and overall satisfaction. It has effects on every aspect of the company activities and
level of operations.
The history of corporate culture
Increased awareness of corporate or company culture in various set of business
operations and other organization activities started in the 1960s. During this entire period,
corporate culture was utilized by top managers, sociologists and philosophers to evaluate the
overall character of a given organization in a company setting. The example of this aspect
included participant's behaviors and beliefs, firm value systems, top management strategies,
worker communication and interaction, a conducive working environment, perception and
attitude of employees existing in the entire company (Denison,1990).Corporate culture would
later develop its domain to also include the charisma of Chief executive officers and company
symbols representing logos and trademarks of the firm's products in the target market.
Corporate culture was not only created by management and workers of a firm but also
affected by state cultures and people traditions, current economic trends, international trade,
organization size and the goods its dealing with. There exist several terms that influence
organizations impacted by several cultures especially in the period of rising globalization and
the increased country to a country interaction of the modern business environment. In such
perspective corporate culture involves the positive interaction of individuals from distinct
backgrounds in the business world (Eccles,Ioannou & Serafeim, 2012). There exists culture
shock which basically describes the increased anxiety of an individual's experience during
carrying out business activities in a society other than their own. In order to conduct a great
cross-culture experience and facilitation of a more comprehensive and productive corporate
culture, organizations have in-depth resources to counter such occurrences. This includes
detail special training strategies that improve cross-culture business enterprise interactions.
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Examples
In top-level companies such as Google, Apple Inc., there exist management strategies,
for example, directing creativity, problem-solving, and high worker's freedom which have
been the normal aspects that contribute to their success. There have been progressive policies
like workers benefits and changes in hierarchical leadership promoting modern trend that
reflects more on technological advancements and modern generation (Farndale,Scullion &
Sparrow, 2010)).
High profile management strategies that usually affect the corporate culture of a
company includes holocracy. This a typical open management philosophy that is composed
of other traits which removes job titles and traditional hierarchies (Galbreath,2010).
Employees usually have more flexible roles and responsibilities to organize and collaborate
themselves individually in a high valued manner. Young companies use the strategy of agile
management technique as a unique basis for its corporate culture. This is because it mainly
focuses on deliverable parameters consisting of a flexible trial and error strategy. It groups
workers in a start-up environment approach to promote creativity and innovativeness so as to
solve arising issues and problems.
Characteristic of successful significant corporate culture
Corporate culture usually reach the optimum level of an organizations ideology and
practice influencing various aspects of business operations from each worker who boost the
customer image. There exists increased awareness of corporate culture in the world for
example change of company vision or mission statement to a corporate
manifesto.Literally,this is a broad concept that enables advancement of the mentality and
perspective of company players who achieve goals and company’s vision (Guiso,Sapienza &
Zingales,2015).
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It should allow tangible methods and practices which are guided by a clear code of
ethics in which the firm implements its core values. For instance, Netflix always emphasizes
the significance of skill and knowledge-based and highly competent employees who will
achieve highly in order to be at the top of the market. Companies should hire and recruit high
caliber employees in a way that reflects and conforms to their experiences which enhance
overall corporate culture. Having an origin story involving a source of the vision statement is
key for business growth and public brand image. The location of the business and office
layout and architectural design should be specified in an efficient manner as one of the most
important advents in a contemporary corporate culture (Hickman & Silva, 2018).
Why is it important to understand the corporate culture?
It is a hidden mechanism of coordination directing people towards a particular goal.
The various ways of achieving a certain goal cannot be modified without proper
understanding of the key culture values. The causes of the challenges involving profitability
and responsiveness issues in firms are often detected in the cultures and subcultures of an
entire corporation.
A proper understanding of the culture of companies facilitates the recruitment of
workers who will succeed the organization enabling them to lower the cost of hiring, market
development, and human resource management maintenance.
It also creates crucial policies and assignments that improve the profitability level and
response to increased market demands. New policies should focus on the culture and
communicate effectively in a manner that depicts congruency to the work activities strategies
and beliefs giving an executive huge power. In order to maximize company ability to attain
strategic aims and objectives, it should completely understand the prevailing culture supports
and propel the actions required to achieve the strategic goals.
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Understanding the corporate culture also enables key changes to be done in the
organization in response to real threats involving its continued work and existence in a
specified time. This enables the management to identify the difference between failure and
success in the modern rapidly changing business environment. The power of cultural change
is strong as it allows employees to perform more effectively, professionally and
constructively (Linnenluecke & Griffiths,2010).
It also facilitates the existence of mergers, joint ventures, and company acquisition
strategies. Corporate culture plays a massive role in state and international takeovers and
organizations culture merging with others dealing with a wide range of similar or distinct
brand.
Understanding the corporate increases the profitability and growth of a particular
corporation to the optimum levels. Shaping and nurturing significant cultural aspects
improves the average nets sales growth for high culture companies.
The management can identify the corporate culture through focusing on workforce
altitudes, employee behavioral preference and the external environment. The top management
of a company should focus on implementing cultural change in order to mitigate positive
results in a business and enable it to make informed decisions for achievement of long-term
goals (Van, 2010).
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References
Alvesson, M., & Berg, P. O. (2011). Corporate culture and organizational symbolism: An
overview (Vol. 34). Walter de Gruyter.
Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture:
Based on the competing values framework. John Wiley & Sons.
Denison, D. R. (1990). Corporate culture and organizational effectiveness. John Wiley & Sons.
Eccles, R. G., Ioannou, I., & Serafeim, G. (2012). The impact of a corporate culture of
sustainability on corporate behavior and performance (No. W17950). Cambridge, MA,
USA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Farndale, E., Scullion, H., & Sparrow, P. (2010). The role of the corporate HR function in
global talent management. Journal of world business, 45(2), 161-168.
Galbreath, J. (2010). Drivers of corporate social responsibility: The role of formal strategic
planning and firm culture. British Journal of Management, 21(2), 511-525.
Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2015). The value of corporate culture. Journal of
Financial Economics, 117(1), 60-76.
Hickman, C. R., & Silva, M. A. (2018). Creating excellence: Managing corporate culture,
strategy, and change in the new age. Routledge.
Linnenluecke, M. K., & Griffiths, A. (2010). Corporate sustainability and organizational
culture. Journal of world business, 45(4), 357-366.
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Van den Steen, E. (2010). On the origin of shared beliefs (and corporate culture). The RAND
Journal of Economics, 41(4), 617-648.
Appendices
Appendix A
Some of the methods that were used to collect data include;
Questionnaire
Survey
Periodicals
Magazines and newspapers
Appendix B
The research regarding the corporate culture involved several questionnaires as follows:
1. Why is important to understand the corporate culture?
2. What are the pros and cons of corporate culture?
Appendix C
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