Creating of optimal corporate culture through complex training program.
Cambal, Milos
1. INTRODUCTION
The main aim of each organization is to succeed on the market. This
success is mostly fixed by the height of achieved profit in which can be
also seen the attraction of the organization for business partners and
customers. This is the reason why organizations try the dynamics of
profit to have the increasing tendency, because the profit enables their
further existence and development. Many organizations therefore invest a
great amount of finances into machines or other technologies in order to
increase their value. However the results are often not so conspicuous as originally expected. The way in which entries in the organization are
appraised depends primarily on the people, on their attitude to the
organization and to their work as well as on their attitude to
themselves. These factors are greatly influenced by the "business
presence phenomenon"--the corporate culture. The culture of
organization supports, or to the contrary it defend the achievement of
organizational aims, the increase of efficiency and therefore it
obstructs the development of competitive position on the market.
2. THE CORPORATE CULTURE--THE MAIN POSTULATES
If a firm wants to be successful, it's needed to be "set
up" on this kind of functioning. Nowadays the conception of
corporate culture is being analyzed by many authors from the management
field of theory and experience, but at the same time (maybe because of
this) it is an idea very ambiguously defined. It is caused by many
different points of view of these authors and by the reality that people
create the basis of corporate culture. In a great portion the ideas,
attitudes and values of individual workers of the organization originate it, while it's obvious that all what is connected with human
thinking and behavior is very rarely possible to strictly determine.
(Vanova, 2005)
We can consider the corporate culture to be a summary or mixture of
"inner--recognizable" values and ways of standard behavior,
relationships in internal (colleagues, managers, subordinates, ...) and
external (clients, business partners, distributors, competitors,...)
organizational environment, of thought patterns and attitudes, which are
in firm considered to be a norm. It is important to realize that in any
case it cannot be a summary or statistical average of individual value
references, attitudes or norms of behavior, but a group phenomenon that
is up individual and has a great social character. (Cambal, 2007)
Another important postulate is a reality that the culture of a firm
itself is one of the discerning factors influencing a set of elements
representing inner running forces of the activities of individual
workers, which direct their acting and living. It means that even the
corporate culture is created and influenced by the individual employees,
on the other hand it greatly influences unwritten patterns of their
behavior, and so it influences the employees motivationally or contrary,
as a strong de-motivator.
If corporate culture acts like a motivator, it becomes a
conspicuous energizing factor. Though if it acts like a demotivator, the
results of such a cultural influence is conscious or unconscious
decrease of energy used for achieving the aim. This, of course, causes
wasting the most precious source that a firm has--employees, their
talents and creativity.
From stated upwards is obvious, that if organizations are trying to
have a long-term success on a present turbulent market, the key
presumption of fulfilling this aim is creating an optimal culture of the
organization.
3. CONNECTION OF THE CORPORATE CULTURE AND THE ORGANIZATIONAL
LEARNING PROCESS
When creating an optimal corporate culture in practical conditions
of Slovak enterprises we often find a relevant problem. Many
organizations approach creating their culture as a campaign (here needs
to be said that in many cases it is more or less outward declared effort
for change without any specific practical presentation), it means that
although they intensively develop, their effort is short-term, evolving
only in a particular way; this effort is temporary and in certain point
it ceases. (Hornak, 2007) Building up an optimal (so in given conditions
highly effective) culture has to be a long-term work, which influences
the orientation of values and the development of firm for a longer time
horizon.
More successful enterprises differ from the less successful ones in
the investments to creating their culture according to the way of
firm's development, but mostly they do it directly and
programmatically. They do it with conscious of the fact that nowadays
the internal settings and adjustments of people are very important and
they need to be accomplished. The rate of investing the time into the
training of people is from the means of creating the corporate culture
in such enterprises a controlled component.
From the viewpoint of fulfilling the requirements of long-term
firms' success on the market is a key "factor" the way,
in which employees react in certain working conditions. While creating
the corporate culture is therefore a priority to focus on the effort to
influence the major kind of behavior, attitudes, relationships and
values of employees, which cause that in a particular situation they
always react in the same (required) way.
From the stated upwards we see that the corporate culture is mostly
about the kind of way. The success and the ability of competition of
enterprises is certainly the result of certain way in which they
function. Sure, it is unable to avoid the entrance investments,
operating costs and technological know-how, but all of this is just an
"injection" on the beginning; while for the maintaining of a
smooth run there is needed a particular way of functioning. If a
businessman places the first and forgets to place the second, his
investment was wrong. The effective functioning of an organization
depends on people, not on the investments or technologies!
If we want to think about the providing of required way of
firm's functioning, so about the creating (moving in the wished
direction) its optimal culture, it's necessary to pay special
attention to the basic building stone of this procedure--to the teaching
the employees. But attention! It's needed to realize that it has to
be a whole systematic and primarily the continuous process. The
interventions into the corporate culture cannot be reduced on a series
of trainings, because the "problem" usually isn't in
employees (or not only in them), but mainly in the environment in which
they work. And this environment isn't going to be changed by one
seminar.
If a firm wants to invest into the development of employees and
through this affect the building up its culture, and while doing this it
doesn't want to waste its money, it can't use the way of
"isolated" trainings and courses. These partial steps are not
only misleading us away from our aim, but also can cause the contrary of
what we want to achieve--they can frustrate the employees. By showed
isolated (although thoughtfully planned and well-organized) courses
it's possible to replace the deficit of employees' and whole
firm's knowledge, but it's not possible to replace the area,
which is distinctive from the viewpoint of creating the optimal
corporate culture. And therefore individual trainings of particular area
do not lead to the aim. If we want to work on a creating the optimal
corporate culture, the only possible answer is an integrated complex
training program "perfectly suitable".
Successful enterprises are conscious of this requirement, and
therefore they pay a great attention to realization of the continual
learning process, which is becoming a part of whole firm. The main
characteristic of such enterprises is an effort for maximization the
opportunities for education and usage of the obtained knowledge, while
achieving the firm's aims. It means that this process of continuous
improvement is being taken seriously on all directed levels and it
actually happens to be a part of the corporate culture.
4. TRAINING FORM OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING PROCESS
One of the progressive and nowadays the most effective approaches
to the organizational continual learning process and to the development
of human sources is a realization of the self-contained complex of
training programs. The essence of training programs comes out of an
educational philosophy focused not only on the achievement of new needed
knowledge, but also oriented on achieving and improving the skills and
ability of individuals as well as of whole working groups, and on
forming the attitudes--this is exactly what we are "interested
in" when creating the corporate culture. (Holkova, 2006)
These tough goals are achievable through the stated form of
education, because during the experimental trainings there are being
used modern technologies of a participative learning. The techniques of
participative learning are based on the social teachings through
personal experiences, where attendants of such a learning program get
the knowledge and skills based on lived experience in learning
procedures. They analyze, evaluate, make conclusions out of given
experience, as well as they plan other steps how to apply this
experiences of learnt knowledge to the particular organizational
conditions. (Cambal, 2001)
This is the only way how complex training programs enable
realization of highly specialized "perfectly suitable"
educational activities. Opposite to this, the firms get only "the
standard product"--this is the last thing that can currently help
to organizations in a competitive environment. If the enterprises want
to have a long-term success and ability to compete, they have to respect
the following trend--customer oriented organizations do not have to
primarily outdo the competition, but above all they have to try to
differ from it. The main position here has the optimal corporate
culture, because in the market environment, where all the products and
all the technologies are similar, the competition contest moves into the
area of human sources. Effectiveness and success as a result of aimed
influencing the attitudes of employees towards the organization and
their work became a requirement for existence on the market.
5. CONCLUSION
Today, the firms have to be firstly "able to act", what
means for them to be willing and able to react quickly, being in a
closer relationship with a customer, supporting the internal business
activity by offering the operative autonomy and continuously to innovate it. The key factor of accepting all given rules of organizational
functioning is creating such corporate culture that will enable the
subject not only to adapt to given conditions but also to use them as a
competition asset.
The presumption of creating this kind of corporate culture is
realization of a continual organization learning process in the form of
complex training programs that represent intensive learning in a
situation of aimed support and stimulation. This form of organization
learning evokes in employees the need of further development by using
the gained knowledge; the need of self-education and self-improvement.
Therefore our future research will be focused on creating process
of corporate culture optimalization with application of complex training
programs.
6. REFERENCES
Cambal, M. (2007). Continuous Education of Employees as Necessary
Condition in Forming Optimal Corporate Culture. AlumniPress, ISBN 978-80-8096-013-1, Trnava
Cambal, M. (2001). Company Education--A Supposition of Building
Optimum Company Culture. Research Papers Faculty of Materials Science and Technology SUT in Trnava. No.11, pp. 23--27, ISBN 80-227-1648-0
Holkova, A. (2006) Managers Possibilities How to Involve Employees
into Process of Effective Change Manage. Forum of manager. No.4, pp.
11--13, ISSN 1336-7773, Bratislava
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
Vanova, J. (2005). The Corporate Culture and the Relationship with
other Incorporeal Phenomena of Enterprise. Research Papers Faculty of
Materials Science and Technology SUT in Trnava. No.18, pp. 165--170,
ISSN 1336-1589
