Corporate culture application in enterprises as assumption their long-term prosperity.
Cambal, Milos ; Hoghova, Katarina
1. INTRODUCTION
The corporate culture is a phenomenon, which is very complex, hard
to define and hard to explain, but it has great influence on the
long-term company success. On one side it may be the source of company
power and the advantage in competition, on the other hand it may also be
the source of slowing down the progress of the company, as well as it
may be the source of destruction. (Jancikova, 2006)
The corporate culture is a complex of basic predictions, values,
behavior standards and approaches, which are shared by the members of
the company. It has a significant part in ensuring the competitive
ability of the company. These days, when competition is growing at
individual markets, and when the competitive environment is much more
turbulent and less predictable, the role of corporate culture is being
much more important. This phenomenon is referred to by many writers as a
significant factor, which influences the management of company's
high performance, and therefore the managers should pay close attention
to the creation and application of corporate culture. (Lukasova, 2004)
It was a reason what for we (Institute of Industrial Engineering,
Management and Quality Faculty of Material Science and Technology)
realized research that was focused on the actual corporate culture
application in companies operating in Slovakia.
2. THE SURVEY REALIZATION
The survey has taken place simultaneously in Slovakia as well as
abroad from June 2007 to November 2007. Each company could fill out only
one questionnaire. The survey focused on companies mainly in the
automobile industry, chemistry, engineering, foodstuffs industry and
building industry.
The questionnaire consisted of eight questions, of which many
focused on the analysis of corporate culture, as this complex analysis
is the key phase in creating a desirable corporate culture.
In the beginning, the survey provided the following aims: find out,
whether and in what context do the leading employees in Slovak and
foreign companies know the term corporate culture; find out the approach
of leading employees to the creation and implementation of corporate
culture; find out, whether and how often do Slovak and foreign firms
conduct an analysis of corporate culture; identify the most common
reasons and impulses of conducting the analysis of corporate culture;
identify the methods and techniques used to analyze corporate culture.
2.1 Survey results
The purpose of the first question "How do you define corporate
culture, in what context do you perceive the term corporate
culture?" was to find out, whether the employees were familiar with
this term, and whether their ideas comply with the actual definition of
the term. The survey pointed out, that all of the answers outlined the
general definitions of corporate culture. This draws a conclusion, that
corporate culture is a well-known term in Slovak and foreign companies.
The second question "Do you consider it important to create
and implement suitable corporate culture?" was a follow-up to the
first, its purpose was to find out, whether leading employees are aware
of the practical need of corporate culture, whether they determine it to
be an important factor or not. The questioned would provide a positive
answer to this question, and confirmed the importance of corporate
culture.
When asked "Why?", the most common reasons would be: the
corporate culture is a uniting point in the company, it motivates the
people to work better, it has a significant influence on the overall
performance of the company as well as the quality of its services. It
helps in communication, applies particular rules and many facts are more
predictable. It helps to achieve common goals, it improves
competitiveness of the company, as it uniquely identifies it and sets it
apart from others. These answers show, that all survey participants
consider corporate culture to be an important and essential element on
the road to success.
The purpose of third question "Do you conduct analysis of
corporate culture in your company?" was to see the actual relation
of companies to corporate culture, as the leading employees of all
questioned companies claimed, that they consider the corporate culture
to be an important element. This question divided firms into two
categories--depending on whether the companies conduct analysis of
corporate culture or not. 26% of questioned companies claimed to be
conducting such analysis which means that 74% of questioned companies
claimed that they do not conduct the analysis of corporate culture.
How the main reasons was mentioned: "we solve problems which
are recognizable even without corporate culture" (38%), "such
analysis of corporate culture would be very expensive for our
company" (20%). Despite the fact that all questioned leading
employees consider corporate culture to be important, 75% of them do not
conduct the analysis of corporate culture in the firm that they run or
own. When it comes to companies, which have claimed to solve problems
identified without analysis, it is important to know, that the
probability of identifying a problem without an analysis is very low. It
is very common, that this way the leader will only identify a secondary
aspect of the problem, but will not solve the whole problem, which may
pop up later more intensively and unpredictably, as everyone assumes
that it has already been solved. This process does not lead to solving
the problem, but only to make notice of it. If we want to persuade
companies to pay more attention to corporate culture, we have to know
their needs and views about the most suitable process of corporate
culture analysis. (Cambal, 2007). Because of this we will still refer to
the companies in two ways--to those, which do conduct analysis on
corporate culture and to those which do not conduct such analysis.
The fourth question then followed--"When do you conduct the
analysis of corporate culture?". The first option was
"operatively (in case of need)", and this option was preferred
by 44% of those companies that really did conduct the analysis. The
remaining 56% ticked the option "periodically"--and chose the
time interval either twice a year, annually or once in every two years.
Two thirds of the companies which really conduct the analysis of
corporate culture, incline to conducting in periodically, which brings
them a continuous view to the life of the company, it allows them to
identify even the first indications of adverse influences to the
company's progress. In operatively conducted analyses, there are
generally two impulses. The first is a feedback reaction to the noticed
problem, and the second impulse may be a radical change that the company
has gone through. It is recommended to conduct the analysis on a
somewhat regular basis. Only in cases when the management is preparing
the company for a considerable internal or external change which
influences the company, then it is useful to conduct the analysis
operatively.
The purpose of the fifth question "What was the impulse for
your company to conduct an analysis?" is to identify the reasons,
to which the companies react most often by an analysis. 44% of the
companies would choose two most common reasons--either the inconvenient or insufficient communication between particular company units, or the
second most common reason, which was the moment of going from one
development phase to another. 33% of the companies would consider making
an analysis at the time when their company would change in size. 22% of
companies would conduct analysis because of problematic interpersonal relationships in the company, or because of incompatibility of present
corporate culture with the strategic plans. When it comes to the group
of companies that do not conduct analysis of corporate culture, 57%
would probably do so if they had experienced high staff turnover. This
reason was not very significant to the companies who did analysis of
corporate culture regularly or periodically.
The same situation was with the second impulse that showed
different views of companies that have experience with analysis of
corporate culture compared to those, who do not. The ones who do not
conduct analysis, would probably do so if they had knowledge of wasting
time in their company (46%), although the companies that do conduct
analysis did not state the "waste of time" in any matter. The
third most influencing impulse (34% of companies in the second group)
would be the decrease of working productivity--this impulse was not
marked by any of the companies in the first group.
Results show, that the impulses to conduct an analysis were inverse when it comes to comparing the companies in both groups. While companies
that have experience with analyzing corporate culture, had their
impulses in company size change, insufficient communication and the
change from one development phase to another, the companies that did not
analyze culture had their impulses focused on the in-work productivity
of employees or staff turnover issues. This makes us assume that
companies which do conduct corporate culture analysis have either solved
these types of problems, or solve them continuously during the analysis,
and so they do not see them as high priority impulses.
The seventh question "How did you manage to conduct the
analysis of corporate culture?" focused more on the group of
companies that do not conduct the analysis, and the expected answer was
to be hypothetic. The purpose was to find out, which process they would
choose. Even in this matter, the two groups of companies did not choose
common answers. 55% of companies in the first group use their own
manual, and process the results through their own employees. The
remaining 45% outsource this matter to specialized companies. In the
second group 61% of companies would outsource the conduct of the
analysis and 31% would want to work with their own manual. The results
show, that almost 70% of those companies, which do not analyze their
corporate culture, would outsource this task to an external company.
With the last question "What tools where used in the analysis
of corporate culture?" we wanted to find out, which techniques are
most suitable for the companies. The most preferred tool to analyze
corporate culture was the questionnaire with open-ended or close-ended
questions (77%). The next order was: questionnaire with specific
statements, group interview, structured interview, observation
techniques and analysis of internal documents. (Hoghova, 2008)
3. CONCLUSION
The conducted survey shows, that there is a positive change in
feeling the importance of corporate culture over the past. Today, even
companies in Slovakia are aware that corporate culture is a very
significant factor that influences the long-term prosperity of the
company. However, only 26% of the questioned Slovak firms are active in
implementing the analysis of corporate culture. In companies questioned
abroad, the implementation of corporate culture is a standard. Even
though the Slovak firms have very good theoretical knowledge of
corporate culture, the implementation is insufficient. (Hornak, 2007)
Therefore these companies should concentrate on applying the suitable
corporate culture. In order to achieve this, the firms should conduct a
complex analysis of corporate culture as a priority, and the information
gained should be systematically implemented. An appropriate corporate
culture is one of the main aspects that can positively influence the
company's long-term prosperity. Therefore it is necessary to make
an appeal to the companies operating in Slovakia, so that they
practically start applying corporate culture, because appropriate
corporate culture is considered to be a great advance in competition.
Therefore our future research will be focused on identification
appropriate corporate culture optimalization process in conditions of
Slovak organizations and definition settings on realization of analyze
in this process.
4. REFERENCES
Cambal, M. (2007). The Entire Company Continuous Staff Training as
a Key Supposition for the Optimum Corporate Culture Development.
AlumniPress, ISBN 978-80-8096013-1, Trnava
Hoghova, K. (2008) Slovak Companies are Familiar with Theory of
Corporate Culture, Foreign Firms Apply It. In: Proceedings of Internal
Doctoral Seminar. Vol. III, pp. 117-124, ISBN 978-80-8096-058-2, Trnava
Hornak, F. (2007). Development of Creative Potencial of Managers as
a Support for Innovation Processes in an Enterprise. AlumniPress, ISBN
978-80-8096-018-6, Trnava
Jancikova, A. (2006). Organizational culture and performance: An
overview of empirical results. In: Proceedings of The development trends
of organization II. Vol. I, Masaryk university, Brno.
Lukasova, R.; Novy, I. (2004). Corporate culture: from Common
Values to Better Performance of Organization. Grada, ISBN 8024706482,
Praha
