Corporate Culture for Fitment

Abhimanyu Acharya in conversation with Professor S. Ramanujacharya, the `Sage' of Sagespeak

PROFESSOR, we hear a great deal about `Corporate Culture'. What is this? Is it a recent phenomenon or is it, like most management buzzwords, just another name for an old thing?

Corporate culture is an interesting phenomenon. I have observed various corporate cultures during the last twenty-five years in the circuit. Once a corporate culture has been established, regardless of goodness or badness, it will tend to remain throughout the life of the corporation regardless of attempts to change it. It can be repressed (if it is good), modifications can be attempted if it is perceived to be `bad', but by and large, cultural phenomena are self-perpetuating and generally do not change significantly over time.

Repressed? Why should anyone want to repress a good cultural ambience?

Some indifferent leaders brought in for reasons of `clean- sweeping' often try to fetch with them the cultures they are familiar with. They would ascribe the existing culture in an organisation as detrimental to its positive growth and try to replace it with an imported culture. However, `good' cultures cannot be entirely repressed by changing times or leaders. Similarly, well-disposed leaders find it difficult, if not impossible, to significantly improve `bad' cultures. The reasons for this are many, but the main contributors are organisational attitudes, expectations and levels of trust. When an attitude, expectation or level of trust is established, it quickly becomes entrenched.

What significance does this have on the individual? Surely, if corporates are so influenced, an individual must be too, and vice-versa?

Even when a single individual is motivated to change his own attitudes, expectations, habits or trust levels, sometimes it takes years of persistent effort or even professional therapy to effect significant change. We must multiply this difficulty by the number of people in an organisation. Further, we must understand that they all have different levels of motivation to change (very few will be motivated to change something that has "made sense" or served them well in a past situation) we can understand the difficulty of effecting change in a corporate environment.

How can a jobseeker discern the difference between something that will be good for him and something that will cramp his style?

The trick lies in being able to tell the difference between a bad day or a temporarily dysfunctional group (which happens quite frequently, even in the best of places) and a truly negative corporate culture.

It is possible for a corporate culture to be truly inimical to your own culture, ethics, and attitudes. If this is the case, you will save time, energy and frustration by detecting that during your interview. Please remember that interviews are just that; you learn about the job while they learn about you. On the other hand, if are you to find yourself in a truly negative corporate culture, you'd be better off in a different climate.

If, however, you find yourself in a corporate climate that ``feels good'' to you, it would be in your best interest to weather the occasional storm, because such cultures are hard to come by.

ABHIMANYU ACHARYA

abhimanyu@india.com