Corporate Culture of a Business

¶ … Corporate Culture of a Business Entity

Along the past recent decades, the business community has been subjected to a never ending process of change. It had to adapt to the new requirements of its customers, business partners, intermediaries, to the rules of the governmental institutions and the pressures of the non-governmental ones, but also, most importantly, the companies had to subject to the new requirements forwarded by the labor force. More recently, it is insufficient to hire an employee and place him at a desk; the employer has to offer training and development opportunities; he has to offer equal opportunities and lack of discrimination; he has to stimulate the employees and unite their individual goals with the overall goal of the organization; he has to create a pleasant and dynamic working environment - all these features (alongside with others) are organized under the corporate culture. The research paper will focus on the ideas integrated and promoted by several corporate cultures, meaning basically the corporate cultures of various companies.

2. Literature Review

After an introductory part on the importance of having and studying a corporate culture, the research paper would continue with a literature review on the matter at hand. This part will summarize ideas from books and specialized journals and magazines. References from website could also be included, but the articles would have to be peer reviewed.

A first source of information would consist of Howard Oden's "Managing Corporate Culture, Innovation and Intrapreneurship." The book commences by introducing the concept of innovation and its importance in the process of forming a corporate culture. The author then continues by emphasizing on the importance of developing and implementing the corporate culture as an ongoing process of change and adaptation to the new requirements and features of the industry, the market and the stakeholders. Attention should be given to several types of stakeholders, including the employees, the customers, the shareholders or the business partners. The paper would then present how each type of stakeholder influences or is influenced by the corporate culture.

A second book to present is "Corporate Culture and the Quality Organization" by James Fairfield-Sonn. The author looks at the quality organization from various perspectives, including the human resource, change, strategic implementations, but also corporate cultures. As such, attention should be given on how the corporate culture can influence the quality of the operations handled by the organization. In other words, can varying corporate cultures lead to varying profitability rates and varying customer satisfaction levels?

A third literary work to look at is Satyendra Singh's "Market Orientation, Corporate Culture and Business Performance." With the aid of this material, the writer would be able to identify any market influences on the corporate culture and vice versa. Otherwise put, does a corporate culture influence the market perception of the organization; or, does the market perception influence the corporate culture?

The corporate culture is also said by some economists to be a guarantee of a job well done. To see if this statement is indeed true, the writer would analyze Jesper Sorensen's journal article "The Strength of Corporate Culture and the Reliability of Firm Performance."

Towards the end of the literary review, the writer should recognize the importance of more modern approaches and influences upon the corporate culture. On of these could be telecommuting. In other words, does the lack of physical presence within the organization affect its culture? To answer this, one could read "Telecommuting's Impact on Corporate Culture and Individual Workers: Examining the Effect of Employee Isolation" by Thomas Gainey, Donald Kelley and Joseph Hill.

3. Research Objective

There are several aims of the research paper, divided into more general and more specific objectives. The general ones include answering questions such as the importance of having a corporate culture and its characteristics. Is having a strong corporate culture better than having a weak one? Also, a general objective, but a most important one, is that of identifying the elements contained in a corporate culture. Do these simply refer to the working environment, or do they also include features such as employee - employer relations or employee - customer relations?

Then, the more specific objectives refer to answering questions related to the forces that affect an organizations' culture. For instance, is a corporate culture influenced by the changes in the micro and macro environments? And as a result, should the corporate culture develop in accordance to the changes in the environment? Then, does the corporate culture influence the quality of the operations undergone by the company and can it impact the customer satisfaction and the overall results of the company? Also, does the corporate culture influence the marketing practices and strategies implemented by an organization? or, if the organization has a certain and unique culture, should they implement similar marketing strategies? In other words, are the marketing strategies connected to the corporate culture or only to the products and services offered in the means of satisfying the customers and registering profits?

How is the corporate culture perceived by the outside environment? Does it indeed represent the guarantee of a job well done? How is it then perceived by the people within the organization? The objectives of these questions then are to identify how the stakeholders influence or are influenced by a corporate culture.

Finally, a last objective is that of identifying more modern features which could impact the organizational culture, such as telecommuting.

4. Method

Addressing the above questions in the scope of reaching the established objectives will consider various methods. A first one will be that of analyzing the specialized literature; it is generally extremely useful to look at data already gathered by specialized economists and sociologists. But however the resources may contain certain examples, they generally only offer theoretical information. As such, to get a clearer view and be able to form an objective opinion, the studying of secondary sources has to be combined with the study of primary resources.

The second method of research is then the study of primary sources of information. This basically means that the writer will identify several organizations and will analyze their corporate cultures. This is generally possible as the organizations disclose the information to the public.

Finally, a third method is that of directly talking to the people within an organization and finding out how they feel about the organizational culture. This may at times be difficult to achieve however. The reasons for the difficulty could be that the managers are generally too busy to discuss corporate cultures, or any other features for that matter, with students or any other persons outside the organization. The researcher could however try to talk to the corporate employees, moreover when they are amongst the best qualified individuals to assess the corporate culture. This could also be difficult as managers seldom encourage it. For instance, if an employee is dissatisfied and speaks his mind, he might feel the repercussions on the job; as a result, employees are reticent to discussing corporate matter with outsiders.

5. Timescale

The matter of a corporate culture is quite complex and sufficient time must be allocated for its study. The actual timescale depends on various forces, such as the disposition of the student, the established deadline or the availability of the information desired. The research paper would begin with the literary review, which could take up to two days. It is true that the data on the matter are quite sufficient, but they are rather complex and selecting the most relevant information can be tedious work. As such, two days should be sufficient for the literary review.

Then, the paper would continue to identify several organizations. They would have to be organizations with which the writer is familiar or well-known organizations, for which more information is available. The writer would have to state the corporate culture of each economic entity, analyze it and identify its elements. They may not always be spotted on a first glance. Foremost, to make sure that the student does not lose interest in the matter, he should be given sufficient time to re-read and re-analyze the matter as to identify issues he may have missed previously. To observe the corporate culture of several companies, two days should be sufficient time.

The final part of the research paper will consist of personal observations and conclusions. The writer will try to offer clear answers to the questions posed in the Research Objectives section. To do this however, he will have to look again through the literary review and the actual cultures analyzed and combine the findings in an integrant part. Two days should also be sufficient for this part as well.