1.2. Importance of corporate culture

Recent survey showed that many American companies do a poor job of creating effective cultures. A 2010 Conference Board study revealed that only 45 percent of US workers were satisfied with their jobs—the lowest level in the history of the survey.

'Culture is one of the most precious things a company has, so they must work harder on it than anything else." says Herb. Various studies indicate that companies with strong cultures are more likely to be successful, bur only under a particular set of conditions. The effect of organizational culture depends partly in its strength. Corporate culture strength refers to how widely and deeply employees hold the company`s dominant values and assumptions. In a strong organizational culture, most employees across all subunits hold the dominant values. These values are also institutionalized through well-established artefacts, thereby making it difficult for those values, to change. Furthermore, strong cultures tend to be long-lasting: some can be traced back to company founder's values and assumptions. In contrast, companies have weak culture when the dominant values are short-lived and held mainly by a few people at the top of the organization. A strong corporate culture potentially increases a company's success by serving three important functions:

i. Control System: Organizational culture is a deeply embedded form of social control that influences employee decision and behaviour. Culture is pervasive and operates unconsciously

ii. Social glue: Organizational culture is the 'social glue' that bonds people together and makes them feels part of the organization experience. Employees are motivated to internalize the organization's dominant culture because this helps fulfill their need for social identity. This social glue is increasingly important as a way to attract new staff and retain top performers.

iii. Sense-making: Organizational culture assists the sense-making process. It helps employees understand what goes on and why things happen in the company. Corporate culture also makes it easier for them to understand what is expected of them and to interact with other employees who know the culture and believe in it.

People are constantly surrounded by culture. It forms the background (often invisible) of our work-lives, colouring everything in an organization. Organizational culture also provides a powerful mechanism for controlling behaviour by influencing the way we attach meaning to our world and how we interpret events. [3, p.391]

1.3. Graphical vision on corporate culture

[4, p.39]

There are many ways to visualize the concept of organizational culture. One popular conceptualization is the onion model. If you cut an onion in half and look at it you will see many layers. An organization's culture can be visually represented in this way (as illustrated in Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Onion Model of Organisational Culture

When we walk around an organization, there are elements of the organization's culture that are “on the surface" and are relatively easily visible. We can see many cultural symbols (e.g. whether your office is on a floor close to the top or the bottom of the building, how big your office is), artefacts (e.g. computers), and patterns of behaviour - (e.g. how and where people interact, how they behave in formal and informal meetings). Equally important, but the less visible aspects of culture are norms, values and basic assumptions people make.

Another way of conceptualizing organizational culture is in terms of its 'hard' and its 'soft' sides. As we see in Figure 2, organizational culture is supported by both social/psychological aspects (e.g. stones, symbols, rituals and by some more concrete elements such as power structures, hierarchical structure and control systems (e.g. financial, measurement and reward systems).

Figure 2: Hard and Soft Model of Organisational Concept

[3,p.390]

Robbins, 1989 [6]

Coffee and Jones (1996) offer another categorization, postulating that corporate culture is determined by levels of sociability (a measure of sincere friendliness among members of a community) and solidarity (a community's ability to pursue shared objectives quickly and effectively) and they have developed a survey that can aid in understanding where an organization fits on this scale.

The combination of these dimensions gives rise to categories that they have labeled as networked, mercenary, fragmented, and communal (see Figure 1).

Previously in my work each category was mentioned, but I would like to formulate them briefly. High-sociability, low-solidarity network culture individuals feel like family and socialize often, with promotions and work achieved by informal networks or internal sub-cultures (similar to Sonnenfeld’s club culture). Mercenary cultures have low sociability and high solidarity, with workers united in support of business aims (like the baseball team). The fragmented culture’s low sociability and solidarity tend to work with office doors shut, like a law firm or a downsizing company (the fortress). A communal organization has high sociability and high solidarity, often seen in small start-up firms, where colleagues are close socially and professionally, identifying closely with the corporate culture (the academy).

Categorizing cultures helps managers in several ways: it gives a better understanding of the pros and cons of that particular culture, helps managers to recruit the most suitable applicants and helps managers determine what cultural changes are necessary. [5, p.855-856]