2 - Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Summary
A lot of knowledge in any kind of organisation is what we call task knowledge. These are things that people who have been there a long time understand are important, but they may not know how to talk about them. It is often called the culture of the organisation.
Howard GardnerIntroduction
Managers are facing increasing demands in looking for strategic advantage and ideally a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. As shown in Chapter 1, each of the elements of human capital strategy is critical for strategy execution. Of these elements, organisation culture has a tremendous impact on the ability to sustain competitive advantage.
Culture is a critical element in business success, as noted by Kotter and Heskett in their research on corporate culture and performance. Companies with adaptive, high-achieving cultures will positively influence the bottom line. For those firms with culture aligned to their business strategy, the performance is quite remarkable as they achieved: more than 4 times revenue growth, over 700 times the net income growth, and a 9 times stock price increase relative to other companies in the same period. While there are many factors that contribute to business performance, culture plays a key role in supporting the business plans and is a key lever in the human capital strategy of the organisation. Research has also shown that distinct culture types have an impact on employee attitudes which impact performance.
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- Human Capital and Global Business Strategy , pp. 16 - 53Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013
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