Corporate Culture: The Theory and the Practice

Corporate Culture is the seventh component of the Organisation Evolution Framework. It’s the second of the “soft” elements after Leadership, and probably one of the most difficult to define. The concept itself of Culture is a concept that triggers many discussions among different social scientists on precisely what it is, how it is defined, how it forms, how it evolves, and what it truly means for individuals. When we apply this concept to organisations, we trigger even bigger quarrels on its exact meaning, despite the many activities done in the name of culture change.

As with the previous articles of this series, I will try to represent the existing complexity of the topic, once again showing that it is impossible to find a correct answer. The key lesson, as with the previous issues of Leadership, is that we need to find consistency in what this topic means, in the framework of our Intentional Design effort.

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Defining Organisational Culture

Similarly to some other components of Organisation Design, the concept of Organisational Culture (often used with its synonym of Corporate Culture) developed around the 1960s and has since steadily be used in management literature, as can be seen in the Google ngram below. 

As mentioned, there are many different definitions of Organisational Culture; perhaps the most known one is “the way we do things around here” (Lundy and Cowling, 1996). In a way, many of the definitions have been focused on identifying and listing the key components and elements of organisations cultures. For example, it is widely accepted that organisational Culture is defined as the deeply rooted values and beliefs that are shared by personnel in an organisation (Sun, 2009). 

Many elements can be included on the definition: organisation’s expectations, experiences, philosophy, as well as the values that guide member behaviour and is expressed in member self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. Culture is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules that have been developed over time and are considered valid but the organisation’s members. Culture also includes the organisation’s vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs, and habits (Needle, 2004).

In business terms, other phrases are often used interchangeably, including “corporate culture,” “workplace culture,” and “business culture.” (Cancialosi, 2017)

When we check the concept of Organisational Culture, there are various points of view we need to take into consideration. Maull, Brown and Cliffe have proposed (2001) a framework of reference to analyse Organisational Culture theories that I find useful, and that I will follow with a few updates.

The first point to consider is rather philosophical and asks whether organisational Culture is an independent or dependent (internal) variable. The second instance looks instead at the themes that the various authors and researchers in the field have followed.

Culture As An Independent Variable

This view essentially looks at Organisational Culture as something that is “imported” into the organisation through membership. This view takes as its key premise there are specific characteristics of “good” cultures that are universal and easily imported into the organisation (Maull, Brown and Cliffe, 2001). 

In this view, Culture is seen as something an organisation has. 

As such Culture can be crafted into something “positive” for the organisation, through specific change initiatives. Several management theories look at the role of managers in creating effective corporate cultures that support corporate strategy. This is, for example, the view of Stanley Davies in his 1984 book Managing Corporate Cultures. A belief that is shared by another approach widely spread in the eighties the Theory Z of Organisation (Ouchi, 1981) which proposed an essentially cultural approach to the creation of successful organisations.

The crucial assumption here is that Culture is an objective and tangible phenomenon which can be changed through the application of direct intervention methods (Maull, Brown and Cliffe, 2001). Many research and experiments went in this direction, and there is substantial literature that looks at national cultural elements, trying to identify their impact on organisations. Many tools have been developed in this respect, and some of the models we will see below (Hofstede and Trompenaars, for example) are firmly based on this point of view. 

Culture As A Dependent Variable

This view essentially states that organisations themselves are Culture producing phenomena. From this point of view organisations are seen as social instruments that produce goods and services, and, as by-product, they also produce distinctive cultural artifacts such as rituals, legends and ceremonies (Smircich, 1983). As such each organisation develops a unique culture which is the product of its history, its development and the present situation. 

In this view, Culture is something an organisation is. 

Adopting this perspective means building the culture concept within a systems theory framework which holds that the organisations exist largely in a determined relationship with its environment (Maull, Brown and Cliffe, 2001). It becomes the glue that holds things together, a strong culture being the element that creates the appropriate balance and effectiveness to the organisation (Deal and Kennedy, 1982). 

This line of thought makes intervention on Culture more complicated, but no less desirable. Mainly because the resulting understanding is that firms that have cultures supportive of strategy are likely to be successful, while firms that have insufficient “fit” between strategy and Culture must change since it is the Culture which supports the strategy. 

In practical terms, this approach sees activities as how to mould and shape internal Culture in particular ways and how to change Culture, consistent with managerial purposes (Smircich, 1983).

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Key Themes of Organisational Culture

The same Maull, Brown and Cliffe (2001) also have listed four main themes they identified in organisational culture literature. Let’s see them together, as this classification is useful to establish a typology of the existing frameworks.

Culture as a Learnt Entity

This theme looks at learning as a critical component in organisational Culture. As such, the focus is on “the way we do things here” or “the way we think about things around here” (Williams, Dobson and Walters, 1996). In general, these definitions focus on the way we act and the way we think. In this regard, a widely accepted definition fo culture is that of Schein:

“The pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaption and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered valid, and, therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.” (Schein, 1984)

We will see more in detail Schein’s view later on in this article. What is essential is to understand the effects of this approach: Culture is taught to new members as a way of behaving that is “correct” for the specific organisation. In this sense, Culture becomes a self-perpetuating feature for organisational survival and growth. Also, a consequence of this view is that the visible artefacts of Culture are distilled down to the behaviours that people teach to others as they join the organisation. 

In other cases, we see Organisational Culture defined as the right way in which things are done or problems should be understood in the organisation (Sun, 2009).

This point of view has had a significant impact on a lot of HR initiatives, particularly around the importance of induction and onboarding programmes. When Culture needs to change, this idea acts at the level of changes to individual and team behaviours, often by reconstructing narratives through ad-hoc storytelling. 

Culture as a Belief System

This theme looks at the impact of beliefs in the definition of Culture, as an extension of the management models that characterise the organisation. A description that is linked to this theme comes from Davis: 

“The pattern of shared beliefs and values that give members of an institution meaning, and provide them with the rules for behaviour in their organisation.” (Davis, 1984)

Thinking in terms of beliefs system means distinguishing between different types of beliefs. Some are profound, guiding thoughts that impact the actions of the entire organisation. Difficult to change, they can be inferred from artefacts and behaviours of members. But there is also a second category of beliefs, sometimes called “daily beliefs”. These can be described as the rules and feelings about everyday behaviour. However these are dynamic and situational, they change to match context. Under this set of definitions, organisational Culture is a set of shared assumptions that guide what happens in organisations by defining appropriate behaviour for various situations (Ravasi and Schultz, 2006)

Seen this way, it is understandable how Organizational Culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. Also, organisational Culture may influence how much employees identify with their organisation (Schrodt, 2002).

A consequence of this theme is that as you build an organisation from scratch, you should define the two-three core principles on which to establish foundational beliefs. An example can be Creativity in the case of Pixar, as we have seen in the book by Ed Catmull, a great example of intentional design. Actions that go against the core beliefs will most probably fail unless they are accompanied by an extensive program to support the modification of these beliefs. 

Culture as Strategy

Culture eats strategy for breakfast is one of the most famous quotes, often attributed to Peter Drucker. Whoever originated that quote, is an excellent frame for those that think of primacy of Culture vs strategy, or an intimate relationship between the two. Paul Bate goes at length in explaining his point of view that Culture and strategy are the same things. 

“I am not suggesting that Culture is like strategy (and vice versa), nor am I saying that Culture and strategy are closely related… What I am saying is that one is the other… Culture is a strategic phenomenon: strategy is a culture phenomenon.” (Bate, 1995)

The implication of this theme is a strong focus on strategy development as a cultural activity. The basic assumption is that beliefs impact the definition of strategy. Which is why the definition of a strategy needs to take into consideration the cultural aspects, and need to have a storytelling component. Many of the activities that related to the usage of Purpose as a Strategic Asset have their foundation onto this theme.

The second consequence of this theme is that Culture Change is Strategic Change. The idea to set up a process that is separate is simply flawed and constitutes a waste of energy. 

On one side, this theme seems to deliver an even more pivotal role to Culture, on the other side, it ends up discouraging specific interventions in the domain. 

Culture as Mental Programming

A fourth theme, which integrates some of the other views partially, sees Culture as a “mental programming” of individuals. One of the key promoters of this view is Hofstede (1980) who defined Culture as the “collective programming of the mind, which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.”

This definition stresses that Culture:

1. Is collective and not a characteristic of individuals (shared values)
2. Is mental “software”, therefore invisible and intangible as such
3. Is attractive only to the extent that it differentiates between categories of people.

We’ll see Hofstede’s work more in detail below, but what is essential is that Hofstede tried to develop a cultural typology of the relationship between national cultures and organisational cultures. In this view, Culture is valid only if it can be measured, thus the focus that Hofstede had on the development of surveys and measurement tools. A similar approach has been created by Fons Trompenaars, also looking at national cultures. 

This theme makes Culture more a “Measurable element”, but more challenging to change, as the influence of local conditions and national cultures is a lot more impactful than any element that can be defined by the organisation itself.

Common Characteristics

All the themes have something in common: the idea that several deeply rooted assumptions influence the behaviours of the members of an organisation. This is why Culture is often described using the Iceberg Metaphor, by which it is underlined that there is a large number of component that are not visible but influence the visible “tip of the iceberg”. This metaphor was first proposed in 1976 by E.T. Hall, and despite some critiques, it still is an excellent illustration of a complex concept.

Later on, I will propose my working definition of Culture. I want, however, to dedicate some time to the definitions and models that are more used in organisational contexts, trying to review how these also impact change management programs in the organisation. In my view, Organisational Culture is never a static component, but rather a dynamic element that continually evolves, often slowly, sometimes faster.

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Culture Frameworks applied in Organisations

Through this section, I will investigate a number of different Culture Frameworks that are used and applied within the organisation to either try to understand existing cultures or to define culture change programs aimed at impacting the organisation effectiveness.

Culture Canvas

Following the practical usage of other toolkits in the form of canvases, also Culture got its approach into this way. There are at least four different types of Culture Canvas available, and I’m listing them here in an individual section only for ease of reach.

The People, Actions, Results Culture Canvas developed in The Netherlands by Kevin Wejers and dY/dX. It is described as an “open framework” to make Culture actionable. 

The tool is meant to be used both at the team or at an organisational level and loosely refers to the components of Schein’s model.

The tool, however, mixes a few concepts that are not customarily attributed necessarily to Culture, like Key Performance Indicators, and becomes more of a strategising planning tool than a specific culture focused actionable framework.

The Culture Design Canvasrealised by Gustavo Rizzetti is “a strategic tool for mapping, visualising, designing, and evolving your company culture.”

The tool allows mapping both the current Culture (AS-IS), but also future state culture, thus allowing to develop a “fit-gap” analysis and a plan of action.

Interesting to notice a few elements derived from recent research, such as Psychological Safety. Gustavo Rizzetti has created several canvases available for a few successful companies with what he identifies as strong cultures, such as Pixar, Netflix, Patagonia, Spotify.

The Culture Canvas is instead a tool developed by Marc Vollebregt, also loosely based on Schein’s Framework and the Operating System Canvas. 

The tool tries to represent Culture becomes as easy as filling in a piece of paper – easy to understand for everyone, concrete to work with, and tangible to change.

I doubt that Culture can be indeed reduced to filling up a sheet of paper, and also find it a bot naif the idea that everything can be reduced to a single workshop and one tool only.

I believe more breadth and depth of investigation is required-

Last we have the Culture Map developed by Dave Gray and proposed by Strategyzer as part of their toolkit.

The idea is that it is a “tool that focuses on employee development”. It is pretty simple in this structure, focusing on behaviours (either current or desired), outcomes and mapping of enablers and blockers.

The big absent in this canvas is Values and Purpose. This is by design, as the authors wanted to focus on elements that are in control of the team that promote change within the organisation and ideally design and prototype their organisation culture. 

The Culture 500 Project

Several authors have been trying to find a way to compare and benchmark cultures across industries, countries and sectors. An exciting project in this regard is that developed by MIT Sloan Review and CultureX, and that uses Glassdoor data to assess the Culture of 500 companies based on several values. Following the slogan Culture Matters. Now we can measure it (Sull, Sull and Chamberlain, 2019) this project provides a promising framework based on the exploitation of Machine Learning Technologies. This exploits the high number of reviews that Glassdoor collected since its launch in 2008: more than 49 million reviews and employee insights, covering approximately 900,000 organisations. The toolkit elaborated checks the free text reviews that employees fill in, not just the ratings used. 

The project follows the definition of Culture as a set of norms and values that are widely shared and strongly held throughout the organisation (O’Reilly and Chatman, 1996). The researchers listed the most common values reported by organisations and chose what they have defined as The Big Nine.

Denison Organisational Culture Model

The Denison Organisation Culture Model (Denison, 2012) has been developed based on the Competing Values Framework, with a focus on establishing a measurable toolkit, by Daniel Denison and his consulting firm. Their work is based on the Denison Organizational Culture Survey (DOCS) to assess a company’s current strengths and weaknesses as they apply to organisational performance. The survey measures four key cultural traits and twelve related management practices. 

The model assesses strengths in four key areas of your corporate culture: Adaptability, Mission, Involvement, and Consistency.

• Mission. Do you know where you’re going? Do you have clear goals and a strategy to reach them?
• Adaptability. Are you listening to the marketplace to customers? How well do you identify and respond to their changing needs?
• Involvement. How well do you empower employees, build teams, and develop the human capability in your organisation?
• Consistency. Have you established coordinated systems that enable you to build agreement based on your core values?

The foundation of a diagnostic tool makes this a standard toolkit to be used to assess the current status. Applying a typical “to-be” scenario development, it is also possible to establish the trajectory for a change programme, understanding the gaps that are easier to be filled in.

Deal and Kennedy model of organisational culture

According to Deal and Kennedy’s (1982), the most significant single influence on a company’s Culture is the business environment in which it operated. They called this ‘corporate culture’, which they asserted embodied what was required to succeed in that environment. This could be analysed by looking at two dimensions: the degree of risk associated with the company’s activities, and the speed at which companies – and their employees – get feedback on whether decisions or strategies are successful.

By feedback Deal and Kennedy did not mean just bonuses, promotions and informal feedback. They use the term much more broadly to refer to knowledge of results. In this sense, a goalkeeper gets instant feedback from making a great save. Still, a surgeon may not know for several days whether an operation is booming, and it may take months or even years to discover whether a decision about a new product is correct. (OpenLearn, 2019) 

Deal and Kennedy distinguish between quick and slow feedback and distinguished Risk between High and Low. This way, they have obtained a four-quadrant model with four types of cultures, here described in the words of the authors.

1. The tough guy, macho Culture
   A world of individualists who regularly take high risks and get quick feedback on whether their actions were right or wrong.
2. The work hard/play hard Culture.
   Fun and action are the rules here, and employees take few risks, all with quick feedback; to succeed, the Culture encourages them to maintain a high level of relatively low-risk activity.
3. The bet-your-company Culture
   Cultures with big-stakes decisions, where years pass before employees know whether decisions have paid off. A high-risk, slow-feedback environment.
4. The process Culture
   A world of little or no feedback where employees find it hard to measure what they do; instead, they concentrate on how it’s done. We have another name for this Culture when the processes get out of control – bureaucracy!

The authors themselves agree that this model is simplistic, but it can be a useful starting point for looking at your organisation. Often a mix of all four cultures may be found within a single organisation. Furthermore, they suggest that companies with strong cultures will skilfully blend the best elements of all four types in a way that allows them to remain responsive to a changing environment. This way, the model can also support a culture change transition, by intentionally looking at two dimensions that we are seeing are common even in other models: Feedback and Risk

Handy Model of Organisational Culture

Charles Handy has been a prolific writer on the topic of Management and the importance of Culture. He also developed a model based on four specific types of cultures, each based on four characteristics Classes of Culture. The idea is that civilisations can be organised as focused on Power, Roles, Task or Person. These are made highly visual, in the style of the author, in his book The Gods of Management, and associated with four greek mythology deities.

• Zeus – The Club Culture (Power)
  Zeus presides over a highly centralised ‘Club’ Culture, where one dominant executive holds all the reigns of power, making all of the important decisions themselves. They control all the essential resources and can have low acceptance of what they perceive as under-performance. This Culture tends to arise under a dominant and successful founder, or with the ascendancy of a charismatic leader. Political parties, start-ups, and crime families often share this Culture.
• Apollo – The Roles Culture
  Mature, bureaucratic organisations adopt a reliable, stable, rule-based culture, where everyone has a specific role. People know what is expected of them and will rarely step beyond those boundaries. Reporting lines are well-defined, and decisions follow set procedures. Job positions confer authority to make those decisions, and processes can be long-winded and inflexible. Apollo cultures struggle to adapt to a changing environment.
• Athena – The Task Culture
  The Athena culture is a meritocracy, where the ability to think and get things done is highly valued, and rewarded well. Talent is well rewarded, and teams are fluid, with people coming together to work on projects and solve problems. Authority is less critical here than knowledge, expertise and the ability to influence and persuade. You can see this Culture in consultancies, research organisations, and in agile business units of larger, forward-thinking businesses that may be stuck with an Apollo or Zeus culture.
• Dionysus – The Existential Culture (People)
  The Dionysus culture is all about me, me, me. It serves the individuals and can lead to both creative freedom and equally internal discord and unproductive competition. The organisation is little more than the home and resource for a set of self-motivated individuals who often care more about their position than that of the organisation. Accounting and law firms are good examples because of the partnership nature of the businesses. So too are pressure groups.

The model is probably not widely applied anymore, but Handy’s intuition is genuinely valid on the relationship between Culture and organisational elements. As we have seen previously, he also envisaged new forms of organisational structures, anticipating trends towards self-management and self-organisation. 

Hofstede Model of Organisational Culture

Geert Hofstede is a world-known expert in Culture, as he has been one of the first scholars to investigate national cultures, developing a model that identified several components in the so-called six dimension model (Hofstede, 1985).

1. Power Distance (PDI) – which indicates to the extent to which less powerful members of a society accept that power is distributed unequally.
2. Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV) – which means the level at which individuals look after themselves or their immediate families, or instead consider themselves a part of “larger groups”.
3. Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS) – is not about gender, but rather about dominant values expressed: achievement, performance, status in masculine societies, cooperation, people-orientation and consensus for the feminine societies. 
4. Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) – refers to the extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and unpredictability and try to avoid these situations.
5. Long-Term versus Short-Term Orientation (LTO) – refers to the extent to which a society exhibits a future-oriented perspective rather than a near-term point of view.
6. Indulgence versus Restraint (IVR) – refers to the level of relatively free gratification that some societies allow vs other where strict social norms regulate gratification.

As such, he has been able to classify countries across these dimensions, developing a toolkit that also allows comparison of country ratings for each of the dimensions. 

In the nineties, he has further expanded the model also to include the Organisational Culture as an investigation dimension. Mainly through the work at IBM; he analysed the impact that national Cultures have on organisations. 

Essentially the idea expanded by Hofstede is that organisational Culture touches upon the outer 3 three layers of the so-called, “culture onion” – working practices exemplified by symbols, heroes and rituals.

This has led to a new model, developed and called Multi-Focus Model on Organisational Culture. It also consists of six dimensions, but they are slightly different (although it is easy to find a logical relationship with the national culture dimension we have seen). Let’s see them in detail. 

• Means-Oriented VS Goal-Oriented (Organisational Effectiveness)
  This dimension is closely connected to the effectiveness of the organisation. In a means-oriented culture, the critical feature is how work has to be carried out; people identify with the “how”. In a goal-oriented culture, employees are primarily out to achieve specific internal goals or results, even if these involve substantial risks; people identify with the “what”.
  In a highly means-oriented culture, people perceive themselves as avoiding risks and making only a little effort in their jobs, while each workday is pretty much the same. However, in a very goal-oriented culture, the employees are primarily out to achieve specific internal goals or results, even if these involve substantial risks.
• Internally Driven VS Externally Driven (Customer orientation)
  In highly internally driven culture, employees perceive their task towards the outside world as a given, based on the idea that business ethics and honesty matter most and that they know best what is good for the customer and the world at large.
  In a very externally driven culture, the only emphasis is on meeting the customer’s requirements; results are most important, and a pragmatic rather than an ethical attitude prevails.
• Easygoing Work Discipline VS Strict Work Discipline (Level of Control)
  This dimension refers to the amount of internal structuring, control, and discipline. A very easygoing culture reveals an internal fluid structure, a lack of predictability, and little control and discipline; there is a lot of improvisation and surprises. A rigorous work discipline reveals the reverse. People are very cost-conscious, severe and punctual.
• Local VS Professional (Focus)
  In a local company, employees identify with the boss and/or the unit in which one works. In a professional organisation, the identity of an employee is determined by his profession and/or the content of the job.
  In very local culture, employees are very short-term directed, they are internally focused, and there is robust social control to be like everybody else. In a very professional culture, it is the reverse.
• Open System VS Closed System (Approachability)
  This dimension relates to the accessibility of an organisation. In a very open culture, newcomers are made immediately welcome, one is available both to insiders and outsiders, and it is believed that almost anyone would fit in the organisation. In a very closed organisation, it is the reverse.
• Employee-Oriented VS Work-Oriented (Management Philosophy)
  This aspect of organisational Culture is most related to management philosophy. In very employee-oriented organisations, members of staff feel that personal problems are taken into account and that the organisation takes responsibility for the welfare of its employees, even if this is at the expense of the work. In very work-oriented organisations, there is heavy pressure to perform the task even if this is at the cost of employees.

There is also another component that is interesting about this model, the fact that it distinguishes four types of organisational Culture:

• Optimal Culture: is the organisational culture that best supports your organisation’s strategy to be successful.
• Actual Culture: is the Culture your organisation or department currently has.
• Perceived Culture: is the culture people in the organisation think it has.
• Ideal Work Environment: which gives valuable information about the preferences of the people working in the organisation.

The diagnostic tools developed aim at capturing all four of these types, an exciting aspect of this methodology, particularly in the distinction between actual and perceived Culture.

Last but not least, Hofstede’s model provides also a great way to illustrate the impact of countrys’ images and mental models in organisations, an element to be considered especially in the management of mulltinational teams and structures.

Organisational Culture Framework

Developed by Spencer Stuart, this framework looks at Culture by focusing on eight dimensions (Singh and Mark, 2017) presented in detail in a lengthy article on HBR (Groysberg et al., 2018).

The dimensions are identified on two axes: People Interactions and Response to Change through research of literature and a comparison of other models.

The eight styles identified are again balanced in the results of an organisation, as they are often blended in their existence. The model foresees that is easier to have the presence of two styles that are nearer in the model, versus two that are distant.

None of the styles is valid in absolute terms, they all have pros and cons, and they all can impact the overall effectiveness of the organisational Culture depending on the situation.

The approach further defines four levers that an organisation can use to develop their Culture:

• Articulate the Aspiration
• Select and develop leaders who align with the target culture.
• Use organisational conversations about Culture to underscore the importance of change.
• Reinforce the desired change through organisational design.

Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI)

The Organisational Culture Inventory is one of the most widely used organisational culture diagnostic tools (Cooke and Szumal, 1993).

Developed by Robert A. Cooke and J. Clayton Lafferty, the OCI provides an assessment of the operating Culture in terms of the behaviours that members believe are required to “fit in and meet expectations” within their organisation.

Four of the behavioural norms measured by the OCI are Constructive and facilitate problem-solving and decision making, teamwork, productivity, and long-term effectiveness. Eight of the behavioural norms are Defensive and detract from effective performance.

Results are plotted on the Human Synergistics Circumplex and reveal the shared behavioural expectations that operate within the organisation. It is possible to both do an AS-IS analysis but also include a TO-BE, ideal assessment.

Trompenaars Model of Organisation al Culture

Fons Trompenaars is famous for his research on National Cultures developed together with Hampden-Turner, whereby he identified seven dimensions of National Culture. The initial work was based on Hofstede’s model of National Cultures, but its definition was expanded to include different sizes and more specific focus on individual preferences (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 2020). 

1. Universalism vs particularism, which looks at the importance of Rules vs Relationships.
2. Individualism vs communitarianism, which looks at the importance of the individual vs the group
3. Specific vs diffuse which looks at the involvement of people and the separation of private and professional lives.
4. Neutral vs emotional which looks at how people express emotions.
5. Achievement vs ascription, which looks at how people perceive status.
6. Sequential time vs synchronous time which looks at how people manage time.
7. Internal direction vs outer direction which looks at how people relate to their environment.

Similarly to Hofstede, also Trompenaars developed a framework to investigate corporate cultures, with a specific focus on Change (Woolliams and Trompenaars, 2003). He did so by identifying two dimensions of analysis and, like in some other of the models we have seen, identifying for stereotypes of organisational Culture.

The first dimension is egalitarian versus hierarchical – the degree of power distance between organisation members that are presumed to affect the degree of (de) centralisation in an organisation. Hence, we have egalitarian/decentralised: people are equal, and decision making power is decentralised. And hierarchical/centralised: people differ in position power, and decision-making power is centralised, so the leaders decide and tell the employees what to do.

The second dimension is the people versus task orientation, combined with an (in)formal style – presuming that a task orientation aligns with a more formal communication style. The model creates four quadrants

Incubator Culture (egalitarian and person-oriented)	Family Culture (hierarchical and person-oriented)
Fulfillment-oriented Breeds creativity Spontaneous relationships emerging from creative processes People are co-creators Status for those who exemplify growth, learning Process-oriented, creative, ad-hoc, inspirational thinking Change: improvise and attune	Power-oriented Parent-child relations with loyalty and trust Diffuse relationships and bonding People are family members Status for parent-figures that are close and powerful Intuitive, lateral, holistic thinking and error correcting Change: father leads
Eiffel Tower Culture (hierarchical and task-oriented)	Guided Missile Culture (egalitarian and task-oriented)
Role-oriented Structured rules and procedures Specific role in system of required interactions People are human resources Status for superior roles that are distant and powerful Logical, analytical, vertical thinking Change the rules and procedures	Project-oriented Get the job done Specific tasks targeted to shared goals People are specialists and experts Status for those who contribute to the shared goal Problem-centred, professional, practical, multi-disciplinary thinking Change; shift aim as target moves

It’s easy to see similarities between this model and the Competing Values Framework, although there is not a perfect match. I’ve used this model extensively in the past and is powerful when you consider that all these models can coexist in an organisation, and you try to operate on a fill-gap basis.

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Summing Up

As with other components of Organisation Design, there’s a vast number of options to choose from in terms of models and approaches. I don’t see this as confusion, but rather as a testimony of the importance of the topic and the need to focus on the topic itself. In the case of Culture, it is interesting to notice how relevant the linkage between this component and the organisational model is in most of the frameworks presented. The logic that you cannot truly change Culture without also considering the organisational consequences is a further element that supports my concept of Intentional Design.

Culture within the Organisation Evolution Framework

I’ve recently introduced a Visual Framework that allows visualising all essential building blocks of Organisation Design. Culture is the seventh building block of the model and is the seabed of consistency for all other organisation design elements.

My working definition for Corporate Culture is the patterns and implicit agreements that determine how the organisation operates.

It’s evident from this long article that this definition gives only a partial glimpse in the world of culture. I also decisively don’t take a stance in the debate between considering Culture an independent or dependent variable. The reason is simple: I see merit in both approaches, and both propose tools and instruments that, if applied intelligently, can serve to support both the understanding of an existing culture, and the crafting of a new one.

Again, feel free to give feedback, and suggest any model that I might be missing in this article, using the comment section below. Thank you!

Cover Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

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