Despite organizational culture being influenced by events in the exogenous environment, full accountability for shaping and developing corporate culture should invariably rest with an organization's founder and management (Who Develops, Shapes, and Controls Organizational Culture? http://rosariolongo.blogspot.com/201...-controls.html). The identification of organizational values and the type of behavior individuals should exhibit in the workplace, as well as the adoption of a metaphor that aptly summarizes, explains, reinforces, and links all of these components together, should invariably be regarded as a typical business founder's responsibility.
Corporate culture is increasingly important to employers, who are learning from experience that it cannot merely be considered a discretionary organizational component, but rather as the founding pillar of organizational strategy. Its pursuit is intended to support, sustain, and ease organizational strategy. Business culture requires constant employer attention and active control, as its unintended derailment might produce irreversible, harmful effects on the execution of an organization's strategy and ultimately upon business stability.
Corporate culture is not only exposed to pressure from the exogenous environment but is also subject to effects from the endogenous environment. Among these, particularly detrimental to an organization may be the deliberate or inadvertent employee attempt to alter or reinterpret the culture fostered by the business founder. This circumstance is likely to occur when a business founder leaves the organization and when management diverts its attention away from the importance of consistently and continually fostering the culture originally developed and nourished by the business founder.
Executives and managers should be particularly cautious and vigilant from this point of view and should do whatever they can to prevent employees from influencing corporate culture, whether their reinterpretation or redefinition may threaten to derail the founder's original vision and spirit. This may prove to be a daunting feat, as employee initiatives may be triggered by management's inability to firmly, convincingly, and consistently foster and sustain the existing culture. In some instances, managers might not become aware of the problem until it is too late, let alone resolve it once it clearly emerges.
The Role of HR
The first question to ask is whether HR actually has a role in corporate culture. Since culture is concerned with organizational values, shared beliefs, individual behavior, and norms stemming from these, which affect individuals at large, and HR is concerned with people, it can be contended that HR unquestionably has a role to play in corporate culture.
This role should not imply that HR should be fully involved in defining and identifying the right or most suitable culture, as this should be regarded as a specific founder duty. Being in charge of developing human capital management practices and in its strategic advisory role, HR is in a commanding position to support an organization founder in developing his/her vision and translating this into corporate culture, but can hardly act as a substitute for the founder.
Considering that culture supports strategy execution, to which it should be strictly interrelated, it may be argued that corporate culture lies between strategy execution and human capital management. It contains the guiding principles for employers to attain competitive advantage over competitors by building on their most valuable resource, human capital. As such, corporate culture aims at fostering behavior which the employer considers most appropriate to achieve a competitive edge and at developing the organization's distinctive approach to "the way we do things around here."
It is hard to believe that an organization may achieve a competitive advantage if its management does not foster a corporate culture enabling the business to effectively execute its strategy. The success attained by the organization will reinforce the individual belief that the behavior endorsed by management represents a recipe for success. HR should thus, first and foremost, support organization management to ensure that each manager properly fulfills his/her duty.
The Role Played by HR in Corporate Culture
http://rosariolongo.blogspot.com/201...corporate.html
From Germany
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Corporate culture is increasingly important to employers, who are learning from experience that it cannot merely be considered a discretionary organizational component, but rather as the founding pillar of organizational strategy. Its pursuit is intended to support, sustain, and ease organizational strategy. Business culture requires constant employer attention and active control, as its unintended derailment might produce irreversible, harmful effects on the execution of an organization's strategy and ultimately upon business stability.
Corporate culture is not only exposed to pressure from the exogenous environment but is also subject to effects from the endogenous environment. Among these, particularly detrimental to an organization may be the deliberate or inadvertent employee attempt to alter or reinterpret the culture fostered by the business founder. This circumstance is likely to occur when a business founder leaves the organization and when management diverts its attention away from the importance of consistently and continually fostering the culture originally developed and nourished by the business founder.
Executives and managers should be particularly cautious and vigilant from this point of view and should do whatever they can to prevent employees from influencing corporate culture, whether their reinterpretation or redefinition may threaten to derail the founder's original vision and spirit. This may prove to be a daunting feat, as employee initiatives may be triggered by management's inability to firmly, convincingly, and consistently foster and sustain the existing culture. In some instances, managers might not become aware of the problem until it is too late, let alone resolve it once it clearly emerges.
The Role of HR
The first question to ask is whether HR actually has a role in corporate culture. Since culture is concerned with organizational values, shared beliefs, individual behavior, and norms stemming from these, which affect individuals at large, and HR is concerned with people, it can be contended that HR unquestionably has a role to play in corporate culture.
This role should not imply that HR should be fully involved in defining and identifying the right or most suitable culture, as this should be regarded as a specific founder duty. Being in charge of developing human capital management practices and in its strategic advisory role, HR is in a commanding position to support an organization founder in developing his/her vision and translating this into corporate culture, but can hardly act as a substitute for the founder.
Considering that culture supports strategy execution, to which it should be strictly interrelated, it may be argued that corporate culture lies between strategy execution and human capital management. It contains the guiding principles for employers to attain competitive advantage over competitors by building on their most valuable resource, human capital. As such, corporate culture aims at fostering behavior which the employer considers most appropriate to achieve a competitive edge and at developing the organization's distinctive approach to "the way we do things around here."
It is hard to believe that an organization may achieve a competitive advantage if its management does not foster a corporate culture enabling the business to effectively execute its strategy. The success attained by the organization will reinforce the individual belief that the behavior endorsed by management represents a recipe for success. HR should thus, first and foremost, support organization management to ensure that each manager properly fulfills his/her duty.
The Role Played by HR in Corporate Culture
http://rosariolongo.blogspot.com/201...corporate.html
From Germany
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Dear Rosario_Longo, No other function, other than HR, plays a significant role in shaping the organization's culture. Nevertheless, this role depends on the empowerment of HR. What role will HR play if there is no empowerment to speak of? In many companies, the erstwhile personnel department is rechristened as the HR department. This rechristening did not change perceptions of the staff towards HR; that is a different matter.
A classic case is Infosys. After Vishal Sikka took over as CEO, he brought significant change to Infosys. What could he do that HR, during the tenure of previous CEOs, could not do?
More than HR, it is leadership that plays a significant role in shaping the culture. HR executes the shape decided by leadership. These factors cannot be ignored.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
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8072A classic case is Infosys. After Vishal Sikka took over as CEO, he brought significant change to Infosys. What could he do that HR, during the tenure of previous CEOs, could not do?
More than HR, it is leadership that plays a significant role in shaping the culture. HR executes the shape decided by leadership. These factors cannot be ignored.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
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I agree with Dinesh. Unless HR is empowered and assigned the role of a partner in culture building, it will be difficult for HR to align processes and practices with the values, ethics, and beliefs enunciated by the founder, CEO, or senior leadership. The onus thus lies on the founder/CEO to support the culture through HR as much as for founding it. For example, it cannot promote quality and competency without an objective and transparent performance appraisal system. HR should be given a free hand in installing one, and senior leadership should uphold such measures and not tamper with them to bring in their subjective considerations to install people of their choice at higher positions or elite training programs. This erodes employees' faith in the values which the organization professes so loudly from the rooftops.
Regards,
B. Saikumar
From India, Mumbai
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Regards,
B. Saikumar
From India, Mumbai
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Dear Both, Thank you so much for your comments, first of all. According to your entries, I'd believe that none of you have read the full article.
Mr. Dinesh Divekar's Perspective
Mr. Dinesh Divekar wrote: "More than HR, it is leadership that plays a significant role in shaping the culture. HR executes the shape decided by leadership. These factors cannot be ignored." Well, this is actually what I essentially maintain in the article, providing arguments in support of this view. I'd personally suggest you remove "Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance" from your post. Not only does it appear offensive, but each of us expresses personal opinions and viewpoints based on experience, which on a global platform might not be shared by all the readers. But nobody can claim that what others write is "false knowledge."
Many thanks,
Rosario Longo
From Germany
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Mr. Dinesh Divekar's Perspective
Mr. Dinesh Divekar wrote: "More than HR, it is leadership that plays a significant role in shaping the culture. HR executes the shape decided by leadership. These factors cannot be ignored." Well, this is actually what I essentially maintain in the article, providing arguments in support of this view. I'd personally suggest you remove "Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance" from your post. Not only does it appear offensive, but each of us expresses personal opinions and viewpoints based on experience, which on a global platform might not be shared by all the readers. But nobody can claim that what others write is "false knowledge."
Many thanks,
Rosario Longo
From Germany
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Dear Mr. Rosario Longo, It is not correct to say that I have not read the article. I agree with the article that HR has a major role to play in supporting the culture initiative of the founder or the CEO. What I said was that HR shall be supported by the senior leadership in propagating the culture. You may be right if the last paragraph supports this inference. However, I would have loved it if it were more clearly brought out. It is not usually the case of HR not supporting the founder in translating the vision of the founder into a corporate culture, but it is mostly the other way around. The reason I said this is that I have seen in some organizations that the culture statements are mostly relegated to walls or confined to glass frames or find only verbal support of the management in organizational functions or staff meetings, but the management does little in supporting HR when it goes to them with some employee engagement initiatives on the ground that it costs the company. Otherwise, why are talents leaving even some blue-chip companies and joining startups?
Regards,
B. Saikumar
From India, Mumbai
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Regards,
B. Saikumar
From India, Mumbai
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Dear Mr. Saikumar, I agree with you regarding the circumstance that sometimes an organization's management does not appropriately foster the organizational culture developed by an organization's founder. Both the distant and recent past have shown us that this undesirable practice produces harmful effects, sometimes indeed irreversible, and I'm sure I did cover this aspect.
Reasons Why Employees Leave Organizations
As for the reasons why employees leave organizations, although inappropriate culture enactment does play a role, I believe there is a wide array of reasons why employees leave. Inconsistent corporate culture enactment and a change of culture definitely play a considerable role as well.
Many thanks,
Rosario
From Germany
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Reasons Why Employees Leave Organizations
As for the reasons why employees leave organizations, although inappropriate culture enactment does play a role, I believe there is a wide array of reasons why employees leave. Inconsistent corporate culture enactment and a change of culture definitely play a considerable role as well.
Many thanks,
Rosario
From Germany
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Dear Rosario Longo, I have not directly opposed or contradicted what I have said. All that I have said is that HR can shape a company's culture provided HR has sufficient empowerment.
Writing views on a specific subject cannot be the exclusive preserve of a particular person. I did not write an article on organizational culture; however, I have been sharing my views whenever a query on this subject came up in this forum. You may go through my following two replies from the year 2012:
- https://www.citehr.com/401810-how-im...anisation.html
- https://www.citehr.com/391506-direct...programme.html
In my second reply, I have emphasized the responsibility of the Directors in shaping the organization's culture.
Lastly, I have been including the statement "Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance" in my signature block for years. Thousands of members have read my replies and this statement. However, none have found it offensive. Your suggestion to remove this statement may have arisen because you took it personally.
Anyway, let us not start the new year on a negative note. I wish you a happy and prosperous new year.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
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Writing views on a specific subject cannot be the exclusive preserve of a particular person. I did not write an article on organizational culture; however, I have been sharing my views whenever a query on this subject came up in this forum. You may go through my following two replies from the year 2012:
- https://www.citehr.com/401810-how-im...anisation.html
- https://www.citehr.com/391506-direct...programme.html
In my second reply, I have emphasized the responsibility of the Directors in shaping the organization's culture.
Lastly, I have been including the statement "Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance" in my signature block for years. Thousands of members have read my replies and this statement. However, none have found it offensive. Your suggestion to remove this statement may have arisen because you took it personally.
Anyway, let us not start the new year on a negative note. I wish you a happy and prosperous new year.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
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Great post! I agree that HR's first job is to support management, but developing company culture comes from every individual. Most of the earlier employees will also play a bigger role in creating the culture. I actually wrote an article that you might find interesting, What does hockey have to do with building a great company culture?
From United States, San Francisco
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From United States, San Francisco
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)CiteHR is an AI-augmented HR knowledge and collaboration platform, enabling HR professionals to solve real-world challenges, validate decisions, and stay ahead through collective intelligence and machine-enhanced guidance. Join Our Platform.
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