Theme 3 - 3.4.2 - Corporate Culture

Question 1

What is the definition of corporate culture ?

Answer 1

A company culture is the norms and values of a business

Question 2

What are the features of a strong culture ?

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

What are the features of a weak cultures ?

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

What are some ideas of strong and weak cultures ?

Answer 4

Strong cultures:
- IKEA
- Google

Weak Cultures:
- Amazon
- Ryanair

Question 5

What are the 4 Handy company cultures ?

Answer 5

• Power Culture
• Role Culture
• Task Culture
• Person Culture

Question 6

What is Power culture represented by ?

Answer 6

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

Question 7

What is Handy’s power culture ?

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

What is role culture represented by ?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What is Handy’s role culture ?

Answer 9

• 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

Question 10

What is an example of Role Culture ?

Answer 10

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

Question 11

What is Task culture represented by ?

Answer 11

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

Question 12

What is Handy’s task culture ?

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

Whats an example of task culture ?

Answer 13

Cancer research

Question 14

What is Person culture represented by ?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What is Handy’s person culture ?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

How are corporate cultures formed ?

Answer 16

• Some of the key factors include;

A. The role of the founders and owners, are
key decisions still based round their ethos
or influence?

B. The nature of the business and the products it sells

C. The degree to which products sold have
changed over time

D. The business environment when it started
(war time / 80s dot com)

E. The recruitment and process of key staff

F. Working hours

G. Attitude to customer service

Question 17

Whats are the difficulties in changing established culture ?

Answer 17

• Strong cultures are hard to change, because a culture consists of interlocking (each component reinforces the other):

1. Set of goals
2. Roles
3. Processes
4. Values
5. Communications practices
6. Attitudes
7. Assumptions