Human resources' strategic role in shaping organizational culture and leadership

¶ … HR can affect organizational culture positively or negatively.

Many HR professionals see their role a staking the form of advising or coaching within the organization. This advisory role is mostly focused on the company's leadership, whose particular style, personality, and value system will dictate the collective corporate culture pervading among the company's employees (Bersin & Associates, 2010). As such, the role of the HR professional can positively influence the corporate culture of the organization by positively influencing leadership.

This means, however, that HR professionals should be sufficiently in touch with the core values of the company to also promote this in its partnership role with leaders. This type of influence is therefore conditional in terms of the awareness of HR partners of how the values of the company can be promoted in terms of leadership to ultimately have a positive effect on corporate culture.

It is possible for HR processes to become excessively invasive in the leadership and corporate culture processes (Ashkenas, 2011). It is important for leaders to use the assistance of the HR department to help their leadership effort. However, to rely solely on HR to dictate corporate culture would remove the spontaneity and essentially human aspect of it. This would, in turn, create a negative effect upon the ability of leaders and teams to function effectively.