GLOBAL BUSINESS AND STRATEGY

Impact of Culture on Business – Deloitte Insights The importanceof culture is readily apparent when things go wrong. When two largecompanies merged last year, for example, it became clear that onecompany had a culture of “low cost” while the other had a cultureof “quality service.” Employees received mixed signals for monthsuntil the new management team took the time to carefully diagnoseand redefine many business processes throughout the company. Giventhe importance of culture and the consequences of cultural issues,many companies are proactively defining culture and issuing culture“manifestos.” The Netflix culture presentation, often used as anexample, has been downloaded more than 12 million times since 2009.The presentation clearly describes a culture that combines highexpectations with an engaging employee experience: Generouscorporate perks such as unlimited vacation, flexible workschedules, and limited supervision balance a strong focus onresults with freedom and appreciation for the expected achievement.The financial services industry, still restoring its brand afterthe 2008 financial crisis, is sharply focused on culture. Oneorganization is using a variety of initiatives to help employeesunderstand “how the bank does business,” including offering speakerseries on topics such as compensation packages, customersatisfaction, and maintaining regulatory standards. Citigroup hasan entire committee focused on ethics and culture and hasimplemented a series of web-based videos detailing real workplaceethical dilemmas. Bank of MODULE

America is focusing its corporate culture transformation onencouraging employees to report and escalate issues or concerns, aswell as incorporating a risk “boot camp” into their currenttraining. Wells Fargo is increasing its efforts to gather employeesurvey feedback to understand current trends and potential areas ofweakness in its culture. A new industry of culture assessment toolshas emerged, enabling companies to diagnose their culture using avariety of well-established models. Yet despite the prevalence ofthese tools, fewer than 12 percent of companies believe they trulyunderstand their culture. That’s where HR can help. As businessestry to understand and improve their culture, HR’s role is toimprove the ability to curate and shape culture actively. Anorganization’s capabilities to understand and pull the levers ofculture change can be refined and strengthened. HR has a naturalrole to play in both efforts. As operations become more distributedand move to a structure of “networks of teams,” culture serves tobind people together and helps people communicate and collaborate.When managed well, culture can drive execution and ensure businessconsistency around the world. HR has an opportunity to assume therole of champion, monitor, and communicator of culture across, andeven outside, the organization. Once culture is clearly described,it defines who the company hires, who gets promoted, and whatbehaviours will be rewarded with compensation or promotion.Nordstrom has formed a People Lab Science Team in an effort todefine and curate a culture that will attract top talent and enablethe retailer to compete with tech companies such as Tableau andMicrosoft. The team takes a multidisciplinary approach to designingprograms to define and reinforce Nordstrom’s culture. Starbucksanalyzed thousands of social media entries to gain an objectiveview of its culture through the eyes of its employees and takespecific actions to reinforce its cultural strengths and addresscultural weaknesses. Securitas Belgium has defined the behaviorsassociated with its vision for culture, performed an analysis ofits current state, and developed a detailed, measurable change planfor 150 of its managers. Software giant SAS was recently rated thebest place to work by the Great Place to Work Institute. It is alsohighly successful, with 37 consecutive years of record earnings (itearned $2.8 billion in 2012). SAS has identified trust as acritical cultural attribute and regularly surveys its employees onelements of trust: communication, respect, transparency, and beingtreated as a human being. Once an organization develops a clearunderstanding of its culture and decides on a direction forcultural change, it is critical to move rapidly from analysis toaction. Moving from talking to doing is the only way to build
momentum.

Question 1) How do you see the cultural transformation forcompanies in South Africa? Comment.

Question 2) Discuss the role of Religion and Education in modernbusiness transformation with appropriate examples.