Corporate Culture:

A Global Perspective


Corporate Culture is

1. Influenced by national culture
and
2. Sustained by corporate leadership

What is corporate culture?
Corporate culture is a manifestation of the
informally sanctioned corporate attitude.

It is often referred to as Organizational
DNA or the Organizational Soul.

It is a fundamental contributor to the success
or failure of corporate strategies.

A leaders vision, policies, and actions
Influential individuals or work groups
Policies & Procedures (Careless, lax, or unclear)
People management philosophy (ignoring employee harassment)
Employee work-ethic (hire for attitude; train for skill)
Organizational policies (no gifts from suppliers, casual
Fridays, etc.)


Corporate Culture can evolve from

A companys
Values, business principles, and ethical standards preached
and practiced by management
Approaches to people management
and problem solving
Relationships with Shareholders, community, customers,
suppliers, government agencies, etc.
Entrenched attitudes toward people from different national
cultures

Corporate Culture is reflected in

The First Step on the Path to
Implementing a Successful
Global Strategy





Understanding the Relationship between
National Culture and Corporate Culture

Corporate Culture & National Culture
Are Symbiotically Related
What is national culture?
National culture is the mental programming
of a group of people. It is comprised of the
values, customs, and belief systems shared by a
particular group of individuals.
Cultural Understanding can translate
to better Business Practices
He separated cultures into five dimensions:
Power Distance
Individualism
Uncertainty Avoidance
Masculinity
Short and long-term orientation
Contributions of Geert Hofstede
Business Ethics:

It can be argued that some dimensions of
business ethics are fluid.

Cultural norms can differ between
countries. What is unacceptable in one country
may be perfectly acceptable in another.

Thus
A healthy corporate culture will encourage
employees to observe, learn, and avoid passing
judgment too quickly.
Ethics
The study of moral obligation
involving the distinction between
right and wrong.

Business Ethics: right or wrong
in the workplace value
management.
Introduction
Ethics is the study of our web relationships with
others.

Companies do not operate in a vacuum but rather
are plunged in a universe of relationships with
multiple stakeholders.

With the globalization the scenario in which
companies operate has become even more
complex, given the emergence of global groups of
stakeholders.
Business Ethics
Business Ethics means conducting all aspects
of business and dealing with all stakeholders
in an ethical manner

Common Misconduct in
Organizations
Misrepresenting hours worked
Employees lying to supervisors
Management lying to employees, customers,
vendors or the public
Misuse of organizational assets
Lying on reports/falsifying records
Sexual harassment
Stealing/theft
Accepting or giving bribes or kickbacks
Withholding needed information from
employees, customers, vendors or public

Common Causes of Unethical
Behavior

Pressure
Fear
Greed
Convenience

Effective strategic leaders --
Craft global strategies that nurture a healthy
corporate culture
Encourage employees to understand and appreciate
other national cultures



Determination to nurture a healthy corporate culture
Courage
Self-confidence
Integrity
The capacity to deal with uncertainty and complexity
A willingness to hold people (and themselves)
accountable for their work
Important qualities of strategic leaders
Summary
Cultural Core Concepts
Its not about Magic Its about Management
Corporate Culture
Managements Responsibility
1. Corporate culture refers to the character of a
companys internal work climate and personality.

2. In a strong-culture company, culturally-approved
behaviors and ways of doing things are nurtured
while culturally-disapproved behaviors and work
practices are discouraged.

3. In adaptive cultures, there is a spirit of doing what is
necessary to ensure long-term organizational success.

4. Adaptive cultures are exceptionally well suited to
companies with fast-changing strategies and market.

5. The tighter the culture-strategy fit, the more the
culture steers company personnel into displaying
behaviors and adopting operating practices that lead
to successful strategy execution.


6. It is in managements best interest to dedicate
considerable effort to building a corporate culture
that encourages behaviors and work practices
conducive to good strategy.

7. A companys culture is grounded in and shaped by
its core values and the bar it sets for ethical
behavior.

8. A multinational company needs to build its
corporate culture around values and operating
practices that travel well across borders.
A relaxed culture
Reputation management
Reputation management is the
understanding or influencing of an
individual's or business's reputation. It was
originally coined as a public relations term,
but advancement in computing, the internet
and social media made it primarily an issue
of search results.
Cont..
. Some parts of reputation management are
often associated with ethical grey areas,
such as astroturfing review sites, censoring
negative complaints or using SEO tactics
to game the system and influence results.
Cont..
There are also ethical forms of reputation
management, which are frequently used,
such as responding to customer complaints,
asking sites to take down incorrect
information and using online feedback to
influence product development
Definition
How constituents perceive an organization
The aggregate evaluation constituents make
about how well an organization is meeting
constituent expectations based on its past
behaviors (Rindova & Fombrun, 1998;
Wartick, 1992).
Evaluative Nature of Reputations
Reputation is an evaluation constituents
make about an organizations performance.
Different standards of evaluation create
different reputations.
PR natural fit to address constituent
perceptions and evaluations.
Value of Reputation
Reputation has proven value to corporations.
Benefits of positive reputation include:
Attracting customers
Motivating employees
Generating investment interest
Increasing job satisfaction
Garnering positive comments from financial analysts
Generating positive news media coverage
Attracting top employee talent
Improving financial performance

Reputation management process1

EMPLOYMENT
RELATIONSHIP
Building successful employment
relationships is important. It also makes
good business sense: organisations with
good employment relationships tend to be
more successful.
CONT..
Good employment relationships begin with
a good recruitment process that ensures
everyone has clear expectations about the
role, working conditions and employment
rights.
A clearly written employment agreement
can help reduce the risk of
misunderstandings
Who is an employee?

An employee is anyone who has agreed to
be employed, under a contract of service, to
work for some form of payment. This can
include wages, salary, commission and
piece rates.
Affirmative action (AA)
Affirmative action or positive
discrimination (known as employment
equity in Canada, reservation in India,
and positive action in the UK) is the policy of
providing special opportunities for, and
favouring members of, one group over
another, when those being favoured are
perceived as a disadvantaged group who
suffer from discrimination within a culture.
CONT..
The nature of positive discrimination
policies varies from region to region. Some
countries, such as India, use a quota system,
whereby a certain percentage of jobs or
school vacancies must be set aside for
members of a certain group. In some other
regions, specific quotas do not exist;
instead, members of minorities are given
preference in selection processes
Side Effect of AA
Can be deemed discriminatory
It disadvantages those in advantaged positions.
It is acceptable in some countries to
tip the scales in favor of the
underrepresented.
if candidates are equal on all other criteria
What is your opinion on tipping the scales to favor
underrepresented groups?
Quotas
Quotas specify that a proportion of a minority group
must be selected for an interview or job.
regardless if they are less qualified
reverse discrimination
Reverse Discrimination
Justification for reverse discrimination is somewhat
ambiguous.
based on retributive justice (past injustices must be paid for)
Example:
women discriminated against for a long time
time to reverse the trend
consequently they deserve preferential treatment

A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining
the responsibilities of, or proper practices
for, an individual, party or organization.
Related
concepts include ethical, honor and moral
codes, as well as halachic and religious
laws.
CONT
A common code of conduct is written for
employees of a company, which protects the
business and informs the employees of the
company's expectations. It is ideal for even
the smallest of companies to form a
document containing important information
on expectations for employees. The
document does not need to be complex or
have elaborate policies, but the file needs a
simple basis of what the company expects
from each employee.
ETHICS AUDIT
An investigation into how well (or poorly) a compan
y conforms to the ethical standards of its industry or
society generally.
An ethics audit may consider the company's own pra
ctices, how it redresses grievances,
how it discloses its finances, whether it punishes whi
stleblowers, and even the general
cultural surrounding its business dealings.
Some companies may formally adopt a code of ethic
s and conduct periodic ethics
audits to see how closely they follow their own rules.
CONTT..
The reasons for examining the state of a company's ethics
are many and various. They include external societal
pressures, risk management, stakeholder obligations, and
identifying a baseline to measure future improvements. In
some cases, companies are driven to it by a gross failure in
ethics, which may have resulted in costly legal action or
stricter government regulation. More often, however,
companies choose to do it simply because it is right, it is
important, and because it is likely to bring business
benefits.
CONTT..
The findings of the audit give a snapshot, a view
at a particular point in time, of the company's
ethics. In the case of a first audit, they will
necessarily be of less value for comparison
purposes than would future audits, but they ought
to give a clear picture of both values and
vulnerabilities. An audit report is a factual
document.