Organizational culture as potential competitive advantage

Culture drives your people’s beliefs, behaviors, innovation – it shapes how work gets done within the organization.

82 percent of CEOs and HR director level survey respondents believe that “culture is a potential competitive advantage.”

Knowing that leadership behavior and reward systems directly impact organizational performance, customer service, employee engagement and retention, leading companies are using data and behavioral information to manage and influence their culture. (Source 2016 Global Human Capital Trends survey)

Organizational culture is about practices

The organizational culture can be defined in many ways. We use the definition of Professor Hofstede: ‘how people in the organization relate to each other, their work and the outside world’.

While differences between national cultures are most apparent in the values, differences between organizations within the same nation can most clearly be seen in the practices of the organizations.

Thus, organizational culture can be transformed by changing those practices. 

Organizational culture is non-static

The optimal organizational culture is always contextual. A start-up strategy surely differs from the strategy of a well established company, so their organizational cultures should also be different.

Similarly, the optimal culture of the start-up should probably change over time, when the context and requirements are different.

Successful organizational cultures can’t be copied, either. They are always aligned with the organization’s strategy and involve the people who make the culture. 

The key thing to remember is that your organizational culture must support your strategy. 

Building the optimal organizational culture requires top management collaboration with HR and according to the Global Human Capital trends 2016 report it affects decisions like:

• How do we create more high-impact customer and employee experience moments and ensure that we deliver them consistently?
• How well does our performance management or compensation system reinforce or improve our culture?
• Are we willing to reduce productivity temporarily to invest the time it takes to build a culture of learning?
• What cultural issues lie behind problems such as fraud, loss, or compliance issues? Is punishing the offenders and reinforcing good behavior enough, or does supporting ethical conduct require changing cultural norms that enable or even encourage bad behavior?
• In M&A situations, how can cultural barriers to integration be identified and addressed before they become problematic?
• In today’s competitive talent environment, how does our culture affect our employment brand and ability to attract, hire, and retain top talent?

Organizational culture can be measured and managed

While culture is widely viewed as important, it is still largely not well understood; many organizations find it difficult to measure and even more difficult to manage.

We audit your company culture by the unique organizational culture auditing tool by Hofstede Insights The Multi-Focus Model of Organizational Culture consisting of six autonomous dimensions working together.

After the audit we help to define the need and journey of cultural transformation towards the optimal for you.

In international environment it is also important to note that the national culture of the organization always affects, how the organizational culture is perceived. That is why you have to take into account both national and organizational cultures in developing your business. 

See: Our services