The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture

Boris  Groysberg; Jeremiah  Lee; Jesse  Price; J. Yo-Jud  Cheng

Article | Harvard Business Review | January–February 2018

The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture: How to Manage the Eight Critical Elements of Organizational Life

by Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

Abstract

Executives are often confounded by culture, because much of it is anchored in unspoken behaviors, mindsets, and social patterns. But when properly managed, culture can help them achieve change and build organizations that will thrive in even the most trying times. In "The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture," the authors describe eight distinct culture styles: caring, focused on relationships and mutual trust; purpose, exemplified by idealism and altruism; learning, characterized by exploration, expansiveness, and creativity; enjoyment, expressed through fun and excitement; results, characterized by achievement and winning; authority, defined by strength, decisiveness, and boldness; safety, defined by planning, caution, and preparedness; and order, focused on respect, structure, and shared norms. These styles fit into an "integrated culture framework" according to the degree to which they reflect independence or interdependence (people interactions) and flexibility or stability (response to change). They can be used to diagnose a culture and to model how likely an individual leader is to align with and shape it. The authors offer five insights regarding culture's effect on companies' success: (1) When aligned with strategy and leadership, a strong culture drives positive organizational outcomes. (2) Selecting or developing leaders for the future requires a forward-looking strategy and culture. (3) In a merger, designing a new culture on the basis of complementary strengths can speed up integration and create more value over time. (4) In a dynamic, uncertain environment, in which organizations must be more agile, learning gains importance. (5) A strong culture can be a significant liability when it is misaligned with strategy. The package includes four companion features: "What's Your Organization's Cultural Profile?" "How to Shape Your Culture," "Convergence Matters," and "Context, Conditions, and Culture."

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Performance Effectiveness; Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Groysberg, Boris, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng. "The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture: How to Manage the Eight Critical Elements of Organizational Life." Harvard Business Review 96, no. 1 (January–February 2018): 44–52.

Manish Goel was the CEO of TrustSphere, a seven-year-old company in the data analytics industry that focused squarely on relationship analytics, a space in which TrustSphere was pioneering a unique technology and solutions in the areas of sales, risk, and people analytics. Essentially, TrustSphere's technology allowed its customers to view the patterns of digital communication captured on the organization’s communication infrastructure among internal and external players. With this information, TrustSphere could help customers infer where relationships existed and the strength of those relationships, information that could be leveraged to address a number of business challenges and opportunities. Based in Singapore, but operating globally, TrustSphere was trying to get its footing and establish its technology and solutions as a "must-have" for prospective customers, all the while trying to navigate the relatively unchartered waters of relationship analytics.

Chapter | Business Groups in the West: Origins, Evolution, and Resilience | 2018

The United States in Contemporary Perspectives: Evolving Forms, Strategy, and Performance

David J. Collis, Bharat Anand and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

BOOK ABSTRACT: In spite of surging interest in the business group organization among business scholars, economists, and historians in recent years, academic research on business groups has, to date, remained within the boundary of emerging markets. The major aim of this volume is to explore the long-term evolution of different varieties of large enterprises in today's developed economies in the West. More specifically, the volume focuses on the economic institution of the business group and aims at understanding the factors behind its rise, growth, resilience, and/or fall; its behavioral and organizational characteristics; and its contributions to national economic development. While business groups, especially those with widely diversified product portfolios, are a dominant and critical enterprise model in emerging and developing economies and have lately attracted much attention in academic circles and business presses, interestingly, their counterparts in developed economies have not been systematically examined. This contempt for business groups in mature market settings stands in sharp contrast to the intensive research that has been conducted on other major models of large modern enterprises in those economies, such as functionally organized firms with a clear product focus and multidivisional enterprises that have diversified into related product lines. The present book aims to fill in this gap in the literature by adopting a coherent approach to this elusive subject.

Citation:

Collis, David J., Bharat Anand, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng. "The United States in Contemporary Perspectives: Evolving Forms, Strategy, and Performance." Chap. 15 in Business Groups in the West: Origins, Evolution, and Resilience, edited by Asli M. Colpan and Takashi Hikino. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. View Details

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This teaching note gives instructors a guide for a discussion of Riot Games, a fast growing videogames firm with a strong, player-centric culture. It also offers references to research on culture that will allow students to decide whether or not Riot Games’ culture will survive its growth.

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The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture: How to Manage the Eight Critical Elements of Organizational Life

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