A Strong Company Culture - Paper Example

A strong company culture has countless positive effects, including an often significant labor cost advantage. Think about the lists of Best Places to Work and the 14 companies I cite in my new book: Cultural Transformations: Lessons of Leadership and Corporate Reinvention. Companies like Zappos, Google, Apple, Wegmans, Graybar, Genpact, and Virtusa. These are typically places with a strong, identifiable corporate culture, and valued employees are more likely to refer people they know who fit the culture when employment positions open up.Another tremendously positive change that can result from cultural change is better loyalty among both employees and customers. Think about the brands with the most loyal fans, like Apple. Any corporate culture looking for this level of customer loyalty simply cannot tolerate ineffective behaviors among leaders or front-line workers. CITATION Mat16 \l 1033  (Mattone, 2016) Ambrect et al. (2001) note that organization culture reflects the norms and beliefs that guide the behaviour of the organization's members. It is an important enabler of knowledge management in organizations. Attributes of enabling organizational culture include understanding the value of knowledge management practices, managing support for knowledge management at all levels, incentives that reward knowledge sharing, and encouragement of interaction for the creation and sharing of knowledge (cited in Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal, 2010). It aligns organizational managers and staffs closely. It creates consensus and unity. Employees have great commitment. Reduces work place stress. Differences/conflicts are eliminated.

The scope of this research paper will first take a look at the current culture practiced by the organization. It will also take a look of types of cultures employed in business, its importance and the effect of the same. Finally the research will give a recommendation on the type of culture to adjust to by the case of the research.

The three levels of culture includes:-

Artifacts and Behavior - What we see, what a newcomer, visitor or consultant would notice (e.g., dress, organization charts, physical layout, degree and formality, logos, and mission statement.

Air asia now has a eet of some 43 aircraft, and both domestic and international operations carrying over 4.5 million passengers per annum (AirAsia Annual Report 2005, p. 3)

Norms and Values - What they say, what we would be told is the reason things are the way they are and should be. Company philosophy, norms and justifications.

Underlying Assumptions - What they deeply believe in and act on Unconscious, taken for granted beliefs about the organization and its work/purpose, about people, rewards etc. CITATION Sch04 \l 1033 (Schein, 2004)(1) what is the impact of each level/type on company operations

(2) which to level/type of culture to change so that you can implement a system of continuous change

How to change Culture

Kilman 5 Steps

Surfacing actual norms (more or less equivalent to surfacing the culture)

Articulating new directions

Establishing new norms

Identifying Culture Gaps

Closing Culture Gaps

Thornhill et al (2000)

Why case need culture change?

Why continuous change is important?

Innovation is a broader concept than R&D. Innovations affect every part of a company. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes four types of innovations2: product innovations, process innovations, marketing innovations, and organizational innovations. A company is innovative when it possesses the ability to change its business or management model, as well as to develop and implement new products that respond to expressed and unexpressed customer needs. A customer can be a company or an individual. But employees, owners, suppliers, and the public sector can also be stakeholders that may well determine a companys success or failure. A company that is continuously innovative can manage to constantly change its business and management models and to develop new products. Companies that never fail may be refusing to take risks, and this can be a sign of limited innovation capabilities. On the other hand, the ability to learn from ones mistakes can be a sign of good Innovation Capabilities. Continuous innovation requires a holistic approach to leadership and organization. It entails creating the basis for an innovative climate and innovative interaction between people. If we wish to increase the Innovation Capabilities of a company or other organization, we need to increase our understanding of how each part of the innovation process can be coordinated within the framework of a company system for continuous innovation. As the pace of external change accelerates, the need for continuous innovation grows.

The following are the six management principles that various clusters of researchers have identied as crucial in explaining the ability of successful companies to engage in continuous innovation: Dynamic capabilities. The companys ability to integrate, develop, and recongure internal and external competencies in order to meet rapidly changing surroundings. A continuously changing organization. If you delay taking action until problems arise, you will act too late. Instead of waiting and springing into action after needs become pressing, a company should ensure that its organization is permeated with a proactive approach to change. A people-centric approach. One fundamental principle found in companies with continuous Innovation Capabilities is that they are people-centric, focusing on the individual and liberating his or her innovative power. This principle is based on a belief that people want to be creative10 and that a company must provide them with a setting in which they can express their creativity. An ambidextrous organization. Continuous innovation must combine two different forms of organizational logic within the same organization. These are daily production, which works best with a conventional planning-and-control approach, and innovation, which requires greater freedom, exibility, and a more open attitude toward experimentation. An ambidextrous organization must successfully handle and utilize the energy inherent in the contrast between these two forms of logic.

10 Hoyrup (2008).

16 2 Management Principles for Continuous Innovation

An open organization that networks with its surroundings. A company can be more or less open to integration with its surroundings. If we describe a company as a system, some companies are more closed systems with clear borders that separate them from the world beyond. Other companies have permeable limits and have a constant and conscious exchange of information with their surroundings. Long-term survival requires that companies develop into more open networking systems. A systems approach to work differs from the conventional linear way of working in two major ways. First, we begin with a holistic view of the system. The system has a number of components that mutually affect one another. This mutual and dynamic inuence contributes to the entire systems developing new characteristics that can be difcult to predict. Second, those using the systems approach are aware that these new characteristics can be positive, negative or a combination of the two. This creates a demand for additional measures, such as decreasing the fallout from unexpected negative system effects. These six management principles can be viewed as fundamental principles or orthodoxies on which a companys management model for continuous innovation should be based. I now describe the background of these six management principles in greater detail.