Factors that help to maintain corporate culture

To maintain corporate culture help the following three factors:

• personnel selection
• activity of the top management
• methods that help new employees to adapt to a company (acculturation)

1. Personnel selection

Is aimed at a definite goal: to identify and hire people with necessary expertise, skills and abilities. Yet, as a rule, these requirements are met by more than one candidate. During the final stage of selection, the priority is given to those candidates who are more compatible with a company’s culture and whose value system is identical to that of the company.

During interviews, applicants get information on the company. If an applicant sees that his/her values contradict those of the company, he/she stops competing for a position. Thus, personnel selection solves two problems simultaneously: on the one hand, it helps applicants to show their correspondence to a company’s requirements, on the other hand, a company has the possibility to reject those who may later be destructive to its key values.

In the Proctor&Gamble company, for instance, the personnel selection procedure consists of several stages. Human resource managers have been trained (with the help of lectures, seminars, videos, role games, ‘pre-staged’ interviews) to detect applicants that would fit in the company. During interviews, it becomes clear whether applicants are able to cope with much work, reveal and solve problems, insist on well-grounded and rational decisions that result in actions. In the Proctor& Gamble, rationality is highly appreciated. All job-seekers take two interviews and a general IQ test, then – three interviews with a management representative and a group interview. The objective of each interview is to make sure if a job=-seeker has qualities that, in the management’s opinion, will help him/her to work successfully in the company.

In the Compaq Computer, applicants are selected on the basis of their correspondence to corporate values, such as ability to work in a team. One of the top managers said: “we can find a lot of competent experts but we are more interested whether they share our assumption how work should be done.” In the Compaq Computers, an employee is expected to get along with other people, to feel at ease in the company where management is based on consensus. In order to avoid hiring “loners” and egocentric people, applicants may have up to 15 interviews with representatives of various departments and levels.

1. Activity of the top management

Founders of companies, on the basis of their own assumptions as well as on the basis of borrowed ideas (sources may be scientific literature, experts’ opinion etc.), elaborate their vision and direct their companies’ activity. In other words, they attempt to form their own variant of corporate culture, they select and train middle management who are able to implement the tasks in the best way possible.

If a founder created corporate culture, a manager is a kind of role model for an employee. It is the manager that forms necessary conditions and incentives that make employees understand values and relations that correspond to the company’s objectives and meet the employees’ needs. A manager must be able to teach others understand what is important for the company, what is right and what is wrong. A manager organizes subordinates in such a way that their work is efficient and contributes to their common task.

To be effective, a manager must have the following three types of skills:

• Technical (to be able to use methodology, technical equipment)
• Conceptual (to be able to see a company as a system of interrelated and interacting subsystems)
• Psychological (to use people in the best way, to mobilize their inner abilities – the core of the manager’s function).

In order to better form and enhance corporate culture, a manager must be consistent. And inconsistence between an action and its consequence on the part of the manager is destructive to corporate culture. If , for instance, a group of employees challenges the management by having long coffee breaks and being late to work and the managers do not display any reaction, the rest of employees may also start practicing the same violations of rules since they start to believe that this behaviour is a norm. In order to form the correct understanding of corporate norms and values, the managers must consistently stick to the chosen policy, the model “action - consequence” must work out in any case. Thus, in order to make employees come to work on time, any violation of this rule must meet negative feedback. People learn more about corporate culture through observation than through slogans or policy declarations. There is an old saying: I hear what you are saying but your deeds speak louder than your words.

As soon as a new employee joins a company, his manager explains to him/her the company’s expectations. When the task is completed, the manager may or may not approve the result. If, for instance, the task was completed perfectly but the manager did not show appreciation, the employee did not receive support. If the performance was poor and the manager did not show any dissatisfaction, the employee again did not get any idea how the task should have been done, i.e. did not get an idea what was the norm for the company. Only in case the manager reacts to any completed task does the employee receives a signal what is a norm for the company.

Consequently, corporate culture is passed on through a manager’s feedback to an employee’s action. As the number of “action - consequence” models increases, an employees gets an idea of all corporate norms. As a result, corporate culture forms a necessary perception of reality in new members. Consistence of managers’ reactions plays the key role in maintaining certain cultural norms. Lack of consistence may confuse employees, which makes the process of mastering corporate culture much longer.