Changing Nature of Work

Corporate Culture

Managing corporate culture was once relegated As companies continue to reorganize their work-
to the annual company picnic. Today, we’ve evolved force, and workers move from team to team, change
from walking on coals to participating in group jobs and even industries, ‘learning the ropes’
cooking classes. Reality bonding is not far behind. is going to be an ongoing effort.

Strong corporate cultures have been credited with

improving performance by energizing employees,
appealing to their higher ideals and values. It is also
often cited as a factor in boosting performance by
shaping and coordinating employees’ behavior.

HP Brand Innovation Lab. Create experiences people love.™

“Simply trying to make employees happy misses the power
of leveraging culture. The problem is that organizational
culture has become faddish; and as such, it has been
over-applied and under-specified.”

Quote Jennifer A. Chatman, Background

Sandra Eunyoung Cha,
“Leading by Leveraging Everyone has had the experience of learning
Culture,” Harvard Business corporate and group cultures when first joining an
Review, 2003 organization—typically described as “learning the
ropes” or “finding out how things are done around
here.” Researchers Terence E. Deal and Allan A.
Kennedy coined the phrase “corporate culture” in
the 1980s, arguing that deep-seated traditions and
widely accepted and shared beliefs govern modern
business organizations, just as they govern
primitive tribes.
At its most basic, corporate culture is the personality
of an organization. It guides how employees think,
act and feel and includes such elements as core
values and beliefs, corporate ethics and rules of
behavior. It can be expressed in the company’s
mission statement and other communications, in the
architectural style of offices, by what people wear
to work, by how people address each other and
in the titles given to various employees.

Types of Corporate Culture

www.lindanewtonassociates.com/html/culture.html

Changing Nature of Work Corporate Culture HP Confidential 2

 Current
Recovery “First there was the dream: Everybody gets
to be a millionaire! Then there was the nightmare:
Will I have a job? Now there’s a back-to-basics
search for clarity.” This recent description of Yahoo
in a May 2003 Fast Company article sums up the
corporate reality for many organizations that are
still recovering from the post-Bubble economy.
As companies have been downsized, taken over,
merged or realigned, business leaders find that
re-energizing or redirecting corporate cultures is
one of the most difficult tasks facing management.
Resiliency Experts believe that strong cultures exhibit
two characteristics: high levels of agreement among
employees about what’s valued, and high levels
of intensity about these values. Some organizations
exhibit high levels of intensity but low levels of
agreement, e.g., marketing’s focus on the consumer
versus engineering’s focus on technological innova-
tion. Others agree about what’s important but are
unwilling to go the extra mile to make it happen.
Cultures that thrive over time are also usually heavily
influenced by the founder’s model of behavior.
Emphasis on Innovation Experts agree that
organizations with particularly strong cultures are
deeply committed to norms and values that promote
innovation, risk-taking and change. Leaders make it
safe for employees to take risks and move quickly
to implement promising ideas.
Corporate Reputation: The Top Three Scoring Companies Across Eight Key Attributes
Fortune, March 8, 2004
Changing Nature of Work Corporate Culture
Getting the right “fit” Corporate culture gets its most
intensive focus during recruiting. HR deploys an
array of tools to determine “fit,” e.g., having candi-
dates take Myers-Briggs tests and submit SAT scores.
They also turn to third-party websites that specialize
in helping companies attract, hire and retain the
right people. Once hired, HR moves quickly to
socialize employees in order to acculturate them.
Job-seekers are heading to sites that feature
personality-assessment tests to analyze their skills
and find their “inner executive.”
HR challenges Today companies are grappling
with a wide range of cultural issues:
• How they manage teams versus individuals
• Managing and staying connected to free agents
• Creating a global corporate culture
• Attracting and keeping knowledge workers
• Stimulating innovation
• Inspiring loyalty in times of change
• Helping employees integrate work and life needs,
e.g., offering family-friendly policies and helping
employees negotiate blurred boundaries between
home and office.
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“Many now work in teams as ‘managing professionals’ with
responsibility for results of their own, rather than working
as ‘professional managers’ supervising other people. Instead
of directing and controlling subordinates, managers must now
provide leadership and create enabling environments for
effective teamwork. This change represents a profound
cultural shift that may take years to play out.”

Quote Herman Miller View from abroad

“Office Environments:
The North American Latin America The tradition for past generations
Perspective,” 2002 was to remain in the same company for a long time.
Within these companies employees would develop
their careers based exclusively on the internal
available opportunities. Nowadays, it is much more
common for individuals to switch from one company
to the other and to extract from each of them the
tools and knowledge to develop their own careers.
Loyalty to the company translates to the trust kept
while in the company, but not beyond that.
Germany Recent mergers and criminal cases have
highlighted the clash in Germany between two
business cultures: the increasingly imported practices
of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and those of the more
socially-oriented Rhineland variety. Big German firms
have traditionally been run by consensus: a German
executive board has no real chief, in the American
sense. Each executive is answerable directly to the
supervisory board.
Japan When two groups of people meet, everybody
lines up in order of seniority, with the most senior
person at the front of the line. Everybody in one
line faces their ranked counterpart in the other line.
As people enter the meeting room, they exchange
business cards (more or less at the same time,
but usually the most senior people kick off the
exchange). When everybody has filed into the room,
they all sit down. The “visiting team” will usually take
and be afforded the most preferable side of the
room, e.g., facing the window. Since a person’s
rung on the Japanese corporate ladder is highly
linked to that person’s age, in most cases everybody
will be facing a similarly aged counterpart.

Changing Nature of Work Corporate Culture HP Confidential 4

 Future

Odd job titles out As job-seekers have difficulty

describing the responsibilities of an “evangelist,”
they will return to more traditional-sounding titles.

Change agents in Organizations will focus on

identifying employees who are the “tipping point”
for innovation.

New communication tools Companies will employ

new communication tools to foster their corporate
culture, e.g., corporate blogs, enhanced intranets,
employee instant messaging.

Crackdown on toxic bosses Organizations Next Generation Unions

will crack down on bullies, a.k.a. toxic bosses, Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century,
as legal attacks mount. So widespread is this 2003
phenomenon that lawyers seeking some legal
remedy have found that in many cases, people
see abuse and stress as simply intrinsic to
employment. High unemployment combined
with an increasing dependence on temporary
and contingent labor means that bullying bosses
have more vulnerable employees to pick on.

Measuring “fit” HR will search for new ways

to measure “cultural fit” via online tools such
as Wetfeet.com. They will also continue to
experiment with working arrangements for
employees who want more flexibility in their
schedules, e.g., just-in-time workers.

Key takeaways • There is no formula for developing a • A more mobile and diverse workforce
strong corporate culture. will increasingly strain the concept of
a unifying corporate culture.
• The strength of an organization’s culture
depends on how closely members share
the same values and how committed
they are to working together to realize
them.

Changing Nature of Work Corporate Culture HP Confidential 5

 Experts Rosabeth Moss Kantor, Margaret Heffernan, Jared Sandberg, colum- Tom Krattenmaker,
consultant and expert columnist on culture nist on culture issues for author and consultant
on corporate culture and issues for Fast Company the Wall Street Journal
women in the workforce

Language Just-in-time worker Change agent A person 360-degree reviews Schwag Anything
New name for a whose role is to imple- A performance review emblazoned with
temporary worker ment a change; change that combines input from a company logo, from
agents may be inside an supervisors, peers, and t-shirts to license plates
B2E Business-to-employ- organization or come direct reports to provide to troll dolls
ee communication, typi- from an outside source a broad perspective on
cally company intranets, and they play a key role an employee’s strengths Toxic boss A boss that
emails, etc in sustaining the momen- and developmental bullies and/or harasses
tum and direction of a needs employees
change effort

Examples of practice Southwest Many experts Enron In the case of Tickle.com Individuals Microsoft There are
do not simply credit the Enron, where the culture go to this site to take so many people inter-
airline’s strategy for its rewarded innovation tests that assess their viewing at Microsoft
success today.They also and risk-taking, the personality types and every year, someone
point to Southwest’s consequences were help them determine wrote a book about
alignment between their extraordinarily sobering. the most appropriate the experience. William
culture and strategy, and careers. Poundstone tells appli-
how clearly employees Google In the “About cants how to crack the
understand the culture Google” section of their WetFeet.com A site code on getting a job at
and how intensely they site, there is an entire that specializes in help- Microsoft in How Would
dentify with it. page devoted to ing employers recruit, You Move Mount Fuji?
“Google Culture” manage and retain Microsoft’s Cult of the
describing everything employees. Puzzle – How the
from Google’s world World’s Smartest
headquarters, the Company Selects the
“Googleplex,” to what Most Creative Thinkers
employees talk about
over lunch.

Changing Nature of Work Corporate Culture HP Confidential 6

 Bibliography Jennifer A. Chatman and Sandra Eunyoung Cha,
“Leading by Leveraging Culture,” Harvard Business
Review, 2003
Peter F. Drucker, Managing in the Next Society,
2002
The Economist, “Talking to Each Other: Corporate
Culture Instilled Online,” 11/9/00
Fast Company, “She’s Helping Yahoo Act Normal,”
5/03
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., “Uncovering a Company’s
Corporate Culture is a Critical Task for Job-Seekers,”
www.quintcareers.com
The Changing Nature of Work Corporate Culture
http://brandinnovation.corp.hp.com/
June 2004
Herman Miller “Office Environments: The North
American Perspective,” www.hermanmiller.com, 2002
Wendy Kaufman, “Job Interviews,” National Public
Radio, 8/22/03
Thomas A. Kochan. “Building a New Social Contract
at Work,” 52nd Annual Meeting of the IIRA,
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/iwer/kochan_papers.php,
January 2000
Tom Krattenmaker, “What’s Your Company’s Culture,”
Harvard Business Review, 2000
Thomas W. Malone, Inventing the Organizations
of the 21st Century, 2003
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