Assessment of organizational culture

¶ … Organizational Culture

Thinking outside of the best practices box: Companies with a vision of organizational change

Best practices involve setting benchmarks for achieving core company objectives. These standards might include understanding customer needs, and, ideally, anticipating those needs. For example, the reasons for the stratospheric success of Apple as a corporation is that the fact that Apple markets an 'experience' to its customers as well as technology. Not only are its designs user-friendly and functional, they are also beautiful enough to delight the eye. The company was the first to focus on aspects of technological experience that other companies did not, namely the 'eye candy' value of technology. Apple also offers great customer service at its stores, and goes 'above and beyond the call of duty' if customers have a problem. It even offers loner computers to users experiencing problems during repairs. And in the development of the iPod: "Apple used no fewer than seven types of innovation. They included networking (a novel agreement among music companies to sell their songs online), business model (songs sold for a buck each online), and branding (how cool are those white ear buds and wires?)" (the world's most innovative companies, 2006, Businessweek).

Another technological company that has taken an innovative approach to meeting benchmarks is Best Buy. However, for Best Buy, the most unique aspect of its organizational culture is its participatory managerial style. Best Buy has instituted what is called a results-only measure of work performance. Instead of measuring hours spent working, workers are graded upon meeting their performance objectives. This allows employees to relax and plan a more flexible schedule, but also focuses their attention on productivity and meeting benchmarks. Before the ROWE (results-only work environment) was instituted, workers were stressed out from logging so many hours at company headquarters, often accomplishing very little. ROWE minimized attrition by basing itself upon listening to expressed employee concerns (Ferris 2008).

Another company that has made use of an innovative model of governing the workplace is that of Google. Google allows for employee self-governance to an unprecedented degree: engineers at the company spend much as 20% of their day working on their own projects (Culture, 2011, Google Website). Through its disdain of formal organizational hierarchies, Google maximizes innovation. Quality of ideas, rather than job titles or the length of time an individual has spent at the company is what is important.

Not all innovative companies, of course, are large companies. Whole Foods is a relatively small chain of organic grocery stores that tapped into the concerns that people have over the quality of the food supply to create a mid-sized chain of thriving operations. Whole Foods does not try to be 'all things to all people.' However, it has been successful by focusing on a small, once-untapped untapped market niche. Whole Foods has a clear sense of mission, and does not try to pander to immediate customer demand, although it is responsive to different regional tastes. It stays true to its values, but not in an inflexible manner (Vodicka 2011).