Theme 3 - 3.4.2 - Corporate Culture Flashcards
What is the definition of corporate culture ?
A company culture is the norms and values of a business
What are the features of a strong culture ?
• Strong cultures have good communication
with their employees
• They have a focus on core values
• The recruitment and training tries to find
individuals who best fit the culture of the
business
• The culture is usually based around the
history, tradition and founders of the
business
What are the features of a weak cultures ?
• A weak culture often leads to business
failure
• It will exhibit a demotivated workforce
• There will be inconsistent customer service
• It may be poorly managed
• It will be very bureaucratic and lack flexibility to respond to dynamic markets
What are some ideas of strong and weak cultures ?
Strong cultures:
- IKEA
- Google
Weak Cultures:
- Amazon
- Ryanair
What are the 4 Handy company cultures ?
- Power Culture
- Role Culture
- Task Culture
- Person Culture
What is Power culture represented by ?
Handy’s power culture is represented by a spider on a web, this symbolises a very strong owner or m,an auger at the heart of the business
What is Handy’s power culture ?
• In a power culture there is a central figure that will make decisions
• There are few rules and procedures
• There is a competitive attitude amongst employees to gain power
What is role culture represented by ?
Handy’s role culture is represented by the
drawing of a bank or Greek temple, this symbolises the bureaucracy, red tape and paperwork systems in this very rigid organisation
What is Handy’s role culture ?
• Decisions in a role culture are made through well established rules and procedures
• The power to make decisions in a role culture comes from the job title, for example marketing director (or Deputy Head)
• This is a very bureaucratic culture and may involve lots of paperwork
• The civil service is a good example of a role culture
What is an example of Role Culture ?
Civil service:
They provide services directly to people all over the country including:
- paying benefits and pensions
- running employment services
- running prisons
- issuing driving licences
They also have staff working on policy development and implementation, including analysts, project managers, lawyers and
economists
What is Task culture represented by ?
Task culture is represented by a matrix or grid diagram, this symbolises a series of work teams in a large organisation - like at Honda they might have a finance team and a marketing team and a finance manager etc
What is Handy’s task culture ?
• In a task culture the focus is a project that needs to be completed
• The power in a task culture comes from those who can accomplish the tasks and have the expertise, for example a car designer, or an oil
rig engineer
• This involves teamwork on a project, a team of experts working together
• Examples are scientific projects and car design
Whats an example of task culture ?
Cancer research
What is Person culture represented by ?
Person culture is represented by a Petri dish, filled with smaller circles
It symbolises employees in an organisation that are al autonomous, skilled individuals - like web designers
What is Handy’s person culture ?
In a person culture there are grouping of
similar skilled people to share expertise and
knowledge
• These all work on a client by client basis rather than on a project by project basis such as in task culture
• Examples are:Lawyers,Accountants,Engineers,
Doctors, Vets, Architects
