To corporate and national culture

Данная работа посвящена рассмотрению корпоративной культуры, а также вопросу особенностей и различий национальной и корпоративной культур.

Ключевые слова: culture, corporate culture, national culture.

Introduction. A useful way of thinking about where culture comes from can be the following: culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas [1].

Obviously, culture helps shape the life of society, national identity and businesses. It can be a powerful force for good or get in the way of the most needed changes [2]. Corporate and national cultures have a close relationship.

Under corporate culture we understand a system of human relations. The corporate culture of the company represents its character, the one-of-a-kind environment, internal energy, unique combination of different approaches to solving common strategic objectives.

Beyond doubt, all organizations follow their own corporate culture, which includes the way the company owners and their employees think, act, and feel.

Corporate culture refers to the collective attitudes, beliefs, and codes of behavior that prevail among the staff, from top to bottom, of any business. The culture is generated by individuals and their relationships with each other, and by the basic goals, orientation and context of the business. Since resources and technology make it so that no company has a monopoly on any service, culture is one of the most important competitive elements of any business.

There is much that we should know about the business effectiveness particularly across national borders.

Corporate culture is very closely related to the national culture. Any multinational organization is bound to have a more structured, hierarchic approach to running its affairs within entirely different multicultural environment.

The aim of this paper is to consider some kinds of corporate culture and national culture on the basis of authentic Internet resources, which may be used in the process of engineering students’ English Foreign Language learning.

Materials. Most experts who research corporate culture recognize it has a massive influence on employee retention, individual productivity and overall job satisfaction.

For example, American Management Association/Human Resources Institute experts identify the following types of corporate culture:

1.      Role Culture is highly formalized, bound with regulations and paperwork. The authority and hierarchy, strict responsibility systems are dominate relations in Role Culture. The system of Role Culture provides efficiency, justice, and stability. However, weakness is the stifling of innovation and creativity as well as impersonal operating procedures.

2.      Support culture: employees are valued as a worker and as a person. It is important to have employee harmony in this culture but weakness is possible internal commitment lacking external focus on tasks.

3.      Achievement Culture: this means rewards results instead of unproductive efforts. Work teams are self-directed while possible weakness is sustaining the enthusiasm and energy over time.

4.      Power Culture: the leaders need to be firm as well as generous and fair to loyal followers. Strong leaders are needed to distribute resources but if badly managed, there’s a risk of political intrigue, personal gain, and rule of fear [3].

In the book “Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life,” authors Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy identify others four key types of company culture:

1.      Word Hard-Play Hard culture. This culture is the world of sales (among others). Employees themselves take few risks; however, the feedback on how well they are performing is almost immediate. Employees in this culture have to maintain high levels of energy and stay upbeat. Heroes in such cultures are high volume salespeople.

Interestingly, this culture recognizes that one person alone cannot make the company. They know it is a team effort and everyone is driven to excel. Contests among employees are common here, as they drive everyone to reach new heights.

2.      Tough Guy/Macho culture. This culture contains a world of individualists who enjoy risk and who get quick feedback on their decisions. This is an all-or-nothing culture where successful employees are the ones who enjoy excitement and work very hard to be stars. The entertainment industry, sports teams and advertising are great examples of this cultural type.

Teamwork is not highly valued in this culture, and it's a difficult environment for people who blossom slowly. This leads to higher turnover, which impedes efforts to build a cohesive culture. Thus, individualism continues to prevail.

3.      Process culture. In this company culture, data, grids and forms take precedent over all else. This culture includes a limited amount of creativity and flexibility, focusing instead on established procedure, corporate bureaucracy and internal hierarchy.

4.      All Hands on Deck culture. Often, this type of go-to small business company culture relies on everyone in the organization participating and working as a team, no matter what their official title or position. The main focus here is working together to ensure the job gets done [4].

Corporate culture is influenced by national culture and sustained by corporate leadership.

Multicultural teams have become very common in recent years. With cross border mobility becoming much easier the number of people moving from one country to another has grown significantly.

Modern civilizations rich with individual cultural heritage, unique features, characteristics, value systems. Therefore these cultures get infiltrated and remodelled to form part of the culture of organizations as well as influences the decision making behaviour of the corporate leadership system or process [4].

Can corporate culture weaken national culture? Conflicts will certainly arise especially in multi-national corporations due to the cultural differences between local national culture and imported corporate culture.

The main difference between national culture and corporate culture lies in the area of expectations from these two separate but related concepts. The two concepts are separate because they represent two different concepts.

National culture refers to the vales of a nation, which includes aspects like the issue of morality, dressing, food, dance, songs, languages and other related things.

Corporate culture relates to the way an organization is structured and run. It includes factors like the kind of relationship between employees and management, the welfare package for employees, and the type of behavior the company expects of its employees.

The differences and similarities between national culture and corporate culture are becoming more intersected with the growth of globalization. The effects of globalization mean that organizations from various nations are setting up businesses in different countries. In effect, the chances for national cultures and organizational cultures to negatively clash are magnified when organizations are situated in countries with vastly different national cultures. For example, an organization with an organizational culture that expects its employees to dress in smart business suits only may conflict with the culture of a nation in which the citizens are allowed to go to work wearing traditional robes [4].

Within English Foreign Language classes engineering students of Tomsk Polytechnic University learn and discuss the different national culture and corporate culture. For example, students may read texts, answer the questions like these [5]:

Conclusion.

Thus, assessing and focusing on corporate culture shows some kinds of corporate culture, which are relevant in business.

Some corporate cultures are based less on control and organization than on freedom and creativity. These emphasize creativity, flexibility, and innovation over strict organization and efficiency.

There are advantages and disadvantages associated with all different kinds of corporate cultures. One that is too firmly based in control and stability, for instance, may stagnate because it suppresses free thought, individuality, and creativity. On the other hand, a company that allows its employees too much autonomy may be inefficient if the employees are not particularly self-motivated. The culture defined by a company's founders also may clash with that which emerges from the employees in the workplace. A cohesive corporate culture can, however, unify employees, increase overall job satisfaction, and greatly improve a business's efficiency and productivity [6].

Nowadays national culture becomes an important concept in international business, it must be learned, absorbed and adopted. Cultural environment in international business strategy should be taken into account in the organizing and conducting business.

References:

1.      Trompenaars F., Hampden-Turner Ch. Riding the waves of cultural diversity in business // Nicholas Brealey Publishing Ltd., 1997..Available at: http://www.academia.edu/6693076/Riding_The_Waves_Of_Culture_by_Trompenaars.

2.      Cultivating Effective Corporate Cultures: A Global Study of Challenges and Strategies: Current Trends and Future Possibilities, 2008–2018. American Management Association/Human Resources Institute, 2008.

3.      Deal T. E., Kennedy A. A. Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. — М.: Perseus Books Group, 2000. — 232 с.

4.      Corporate Culture Is Largely Influenced by National Culture and Sustained by Corporate Leadership. http://www.termpaperwarehouse.com/essay-on/Corporate-Culture-Is-Largely-Influenced-By/197902.

5.      Pavlova A. Corporate Culture and National Characteristics // Журнал «Английский язык» / [Электронный ресурс]. Режим доступа: http://eng.1september.ru/article.php?ID=200900105.

6.      What Are the Different Types of Corporate Culture? wiseGEEK clear answers for common questions. [Электронный ресурс]. Режим доступа: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-corporate-culture.htm.