Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Is Corporate Culture The Ultimate Strategic Asset?

Some Companies Believe Strongly in their culture – they swear by it. And while many have brushed aside this concept of culture as just another soft factor, the truth remains – corporate culture can become the very reason why your company performs well at the stock market and why it creates bottomlines which are far superior than those of industry peers.

During the past few decades, the term “corporate culture” has become widely used in business. It is now well-recognised that corporate culture is a significant aspect of organisational health and performance [Read: Siehl, C. and Martin, J. “Organizational Culture: A Key to Financial Performance?; Kotter, J. and Heskitt, J (1992), Corporate Culture and Performance, New York, NY: The Free Press].

what is “corporate culture”?
Although there are many different definitions of the concept of “Corporate Culture,” the central notion is that culture relates to core organisational values. All organisations – regardless of size – have cultures which influence the way people behave in a variety of areas, such as treatment of customers, standards of performance, innovation, et al.

“strong” and “weak” cultures
Companies where there is a clearly-defined culture, where the company invests time in communicating and reinforcing this culture, and where all employees are behaving in ways consistent with this culture are defined as having “strong cultures.” A “strong” culture is one that people clearly understand and can articulate. A “weak” culture is one that employees have difficulty defining, understanding, or explaining. The culture may not have been defined and/or it is not being actively “managed.” As a result, employees are let to interpret the company’s values for themselves, which sometimes results in the company having not one, but many different cultures.

functional and dysfunctional cultures are assets or liabilities
Strong culture companies can be either positive (an asset) or negative (a liability). If the company’s values are constructive and support its goals, then having a strong culture is an asset. We define this as a “functional” culture. If the company’s values are negative or dysfunctional, then having a strong culture will be a liability. We define this as a “dysfunctional culture.”
 
impact of culture on financial performance: wal-mart vs. k-mart
Culture can impact financial performance, so that a culture can truly be an “asset” in the technical accounting sense of “things of value-owned or controlled.” To see this, compare the performance of Wal-Mart with its (at least on the surface) “identical” competitor K-Mart. There is virtually no product that Wal-Mart has that K-Mart does not have; have the same kinds of stores and they operate in similar locations. They market to the same customers and recruit from the same pool of people. Yet in spite of these similarities, one of them (Wal-Mart) has produced a vastly different financial result for investors than the other.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist). For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,