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Company Culture: A lever for management intervention or a force beyond directional control?

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Posted on: 29 August 2017

Company Culture: A lever for management intervention or a force beyond directional control?

HR Reward | Reward Consultancy | Leadership | Employee engagement | Employee communications | Engagement | Communications | Talent | Culture | Total reward | Recognition | Productivity | Reward

Culture is one of the key reasons why people choose to work and remain at a company – it’s often acknowledged that a positive and supportive culture helps people to remain engaged with the business, be more resilient to set backs and ultimately improves employee and company achievement. Some commentators have dismissed culture as a ‘managerial fantasy’; others position culture not as what a company ‘has’, but as something that an organization ‘is’, and, as such, is not possible to isolate and manage independently (Grey, (2005); Schein, (1992) and Hofstede, (1980)). Yet if we accept culture as ‘real’, then it follows that people can create and share it to solve their problems. This leads to the million-dollar question for HR professionals - ‘Can you change or adapt culture directionally?’ Whether people can share a single culture in an organization is a matter of dispute. It is conceivable that in a small organization where everyone can communicate with everyone else, where they adopt a common set of consensually approved behaviours, for there to be a single overriding culture. However, in a larger organization where there are occupational, hierarchical, functional and geographical separations, the possibility for a single culture to exist is unlikely, as there are different groups facing different problems. The Harvard Business Review argues that ‘Culture change can’t be achieved through top-down mandate. It lives in the collective hearts and habits of people and their shared perception of “how things are done around here.” Someone with authority can demand compliance, but they can’t dictate optimism, trust, conviction, or creativity.’ Culture can be viewed as belonging to and existing between employees and cannot be changed by leaders defining what the desired culture is, enforcing the behaviours that support this and expecting it to become embedded in the employee population’s psychological belief system. Some companies do have strong cultures - I believe these grew organically and evolved over time as internal circumstances/challenges and wider forces impact the people who spend time in the same space as each other. Culture is not part of a company, culture is the company, as it permeates through every interaction and therefore action. If culture were something that could be isolated and controlled by management independent of other organizational variables such as strategy or structure then, rationally, the following conditions must present throughout the entire company: 1. A self-correcting system of independent people; 2. Consensus on objectives and methods; 3. Coordination achieved through sharing information; and 4. Predictable organisational problems and solutions. How often do these conditions consistently exist in practice? (This is a rhetorical question.) But, and an important ‘but’, this does not mean companies should ignore culture but look to embrace it. If culture is about external and internal problem solving, and a company consists of different groups facing different problems then there is a higher likelihood of problems being solved. This also segues nicely into an argument for diversity; new ideas, new solutions, new ways of working… aren’t these the tangible benefits of having a diverse workforce and qualities that are vital in today’s world? An added contradiction also appears - why would any company want to create an environment where the social side displays a strong, unitary and stable culture, whilst, structurally and operationally, the organization needs to be flexible and adaptable to deal with ever increasing change and challenges? I believe culture is misunderstood and occasionally misused. You can’t manufacture people’s beliefs but you can embrace differences, and recognise and respect a variety of beliefs. And maybe that is what a successful culture is: one that tries not to control but actively liberates these beliefs and ideas. All companies face a new set of problems every day. To solve these, I would suggest embracing culture as a free spirit which will surprise you with its enterprise.

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