Corporate Culture : The Key to Understanding Work Organisations
Organisational or corporate culture is widely held to refer to a system of
shared meanings held by members that distinguishes the organisation from other
organisations, that is a set of shared key characteristics or values.
The culture that an organisation has will play an important part in its success
in its market sector. Likewise an organisation's continued success will depend
to a large extent on the ability of the leadership of the organisation to
perpetuate that culture.
A large, established organisation in a mature market is likely to have
objectives of moderate growth and the maintenance of its position within the
market. McDonald's is an example of such an organisation. You could walk in to
a McDonald's restaurant in London, Tokyo or Moscow and expect to see staff
dressed in the same uniform serving the same food from within restaurants that
look remarkably similar. There are no risks to be taken here and rarely a snap
decision to be made and certainly not by the staff.
Contrast this with a small organisation, thirsty for success in an emergent
market such as Steve Job's Apple Computers in the early eighties. Here was a
company led by a very strong character who was highly motivated, possessed a
highly practical imagination and was fanatical about detail. He built up a
multinational company on the strength of his ability to promote free thinking
coupled with the attention to detail that is required to produce a world class
computer within the organisation that he ran.
It is quite clear that if the cultures of these two organisations were
transposed there would be internal chaos ...