Filling The Gaps

I got this inspiration a couple of days ago to write an article about corporate culture (last week at my OB/OD class we discussed the topic and where are the limits of an employee integration). Do we really need it and if yes, to what extent? Is the corporate culture sign for higher social consciousness (“we put employees first”), or isn`t it just a necessity (an easy way to attract, motivate and retain employees)?

Today’s business world doesn’t operate only with strong economics terms as it has been used till the last couple of decades and the success of a company no longer depends only on its policies toward maximizing profits and revenues. Today’s purpose of business is value creation and building a stronger longterm relationship among employers-employees-customers. Companies are trying to create such an atmosphere that will permit them to identify themselves as big families, places of like-minded people having the same values and beliefs. The key factor to achieve this goal is through creating unique corporate culture, but what I am asking is “Doesn’t business go too far?”.

First, have a look at the title- it`s not DO WE NEED corporate culture but TO WHAT EXTENT we need it. We all know that corporate culture contribute to the success of a company but do we know what exactly corporate culture stays for?

Corporate culture refers to the shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that characterize members of an organization and define its nature. However, the real purposes for its implementation are quite contradictory.

Earlier this year, Prof. Rosabeth Moss Kanter has published an article in Harvard Business Review called “Transforming Giants”. The focus is put on some of the biggest TNCs, the same who usually have the strongest and well-known corporate culture. One of the key messages is: “When giants transform themselves from impersonal machines into human communities, they can transform the world.” What I asked myself after reading it was “should it be this way?”. Should companies transform into human communities, is it their responsibility of making the world a better place and don`t you think that the likeness of the people involved in a company (in term of shared beliefs, values, attitudes) would become in the near future more an obstacle toward business success, than a condition for it? Another question one should ask is if the real purpose of companies with strong corporate culture is transforming the world or isn`t that just a new management tool. Even if I would like to think for a corporate culture as a sign for higher social consciousness, in my view is on the first place an easy way to attract, motivate and retain employees. Nowadays people are what differentiate companies and namely the human capital is the key strategic asset a company possesses so the main purpose of corporate culture is securing its survival on the market through policies of keeping its major source of success.

Along with the above mentioned there`s one more reason I refer to it as a necessity- the end of the hierarchy model. The power is much more spread away as it has been in mid 50s , the number of employees much higher and the cultural differences much bigger. What corporate culture does is unifying the people and secure they all understand the main purposes and values of the organization, so in any given case they would act according to company’s policies. The latte also make employees much more flexible.

One of the classic article related to CSR is “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”, by Milton Friedman. As corporate culture is a part of CSR policies or it is going along with it, one could say that the policies for implementation of corporate culture is to increase a company’s profit. The rest (“making the world a better place”) is cause-related marketing.

What do you think? Do you really believe in the concept of corporate culture?

I would like to emphasis that I am not against corporate culture. I am against fake corporate culture and against corporate culture which goes too far. The effects of all nice activities companies undertake nowadays are easy to be noticed and have really great impact in the society. The question is that the same activities somehow take off the focus from the main business purpose… It`s like too show-off policies. I really could not agree that executives put people on first place, although if they want to survive, they definitely should start doing it. But not only on paper, because take whoever big TNC is, proud of its corporate culture and core values, put its name along with “scandal” in google and you would see where it would lead you. It would give you much better picture than the one from the main web page of the same company. I don`t want to say that this is always the case, but it often happens that all nice sentences a company stands for are just a new marketing campaign.

Aren`t the quality of services and products, along with good (satisfactory salary, opportunities for promotion etc) and safety conditions for work, the only things a company should take care of? Including, of course, the environmental issues. However, in my opinion that`s something a company must do anyway and it`s not related with CSR for ex.

Last thing, concerning values… Aren`t values culture-determined?