Insights into the ‘Culture’ of business organisations

There’s just been a terrific book review in The Economist picking up on a great topic: corporate culture. The term is on everybody’s lips at the moment, helped by the current Leonardo DiCaprio movie ‘Wolves of Wall Street’, which is said to present a damning picture of the behaviour of some US banks.

Culture is everywhere in Business Studies. Take the question why do mergers fail? Answer: because the cultures of the companies doing the merging often clash. Why do some companies succeed and others fail? Because they have either supportive or toxic cultures.

Have a look at the review of The CEO’s Guide to Corporate Culture by John Childress.

Here are a few key points:

It is much harder for competitors to copy your culture than your strategy. Some companies think their success is built on their culture.

What is “culture”? Is it the image that a company projects to the world, or a company’s most cherished habits? For others it means its canteen culture, “the way we do things around here”, which is often the opposite of the formal rules.

The issue of culture raises many questions. Are bankers greedy because banks have a toxic culture or do banks have a toxic culture because bankers are greedy? Do companies fail because they have a toxic culture or do they have a toxic culture because they are going down the pan? Some successful companies, such as Apple, have an astonishing loyalty from their employees. Others, including Ryanair, are as unpopular with their employees as they are with their customers. Perhaps there are as many successful cultures as there are successful companies.

And how do managers create a effective “culture” anyway?