How corporate culture supports strategy execution

It is an axiomatic fact that strategy execution and corporate culture play a remarkable role in the attainment of organizational success. From the chronological point of view, it can be argued that the significance of corporate culture emerges in between strategy formulation and strategy execution. Organizational strategy can be in fact properly developed on paper, but whether this is not also appropriately executed with great or sufficient precision it is hardly imaginable that an employer might ever be able to successfully point in the right direction and achieve its scope, that is to say successfully pursue its intended strategy. The most effective and appropriate KPI to asses corporate culture can be hence identified with its capability to support organizational strategy and more in particular its consistent and successful execution.

 Table 1

The values, beliefs, behaviour and “the way we do things around here” fostered within a business by an employer in that considered crucial to the attainment of its objectives clearly vary from organization to organization. The fact each company has a different corporate culture peculiar to this and only this should indeed represent the distinctive characteristic of each organization, somewhat of its DNA. In the unlikely event of two or more organizations fostering exactly the same type of culture, nonetheless, even remarkable differences between these are likely to emerge by reason of its different execution.

It can be very pragmatically concluded that the efficacy of corporate culture sorely depends on how helpful and supportive this proves to be of strategy execution. To be deemed appropriate and coherent with the employer’s wants and expectations an organization’s culture essentially needs to ease and favour the effectual strategy implementation process.

Every business founder concentrates and focuses his/her efforts on fostering and promoting a type of culture peculiar to his/her organization so as to enabling this to achieve competitive advantage. Notwithstanding, it can be identified some features and components, which whether properly underpin corporate culture, should contribute to considerably increase employers chances to successfully implement their strategy.

Table 2

Readiness to change

The speed change occurs in the exogenous environment habitually requires employers to introduce changes into their organizations at the same pace. The fact that employees may oppose and resist change, albeit this is necessary for their organization to stay afloat and remain competitive in the relevant market, and the delay in its implementation this habitually entails are likely to have a remarkably negative impact on strategy implementation.

Individual readiness to change should be hence considered as one of the main underpinning pillars of corporate culture and should be invariably inspired by concepts like dynamism, energy, adaptability and innovation. The metaphor of the organization as a chameleon might prove to be effective to properly convey the message. This species of lizards has adapted to live in trees and developed the ability to change the colour of their skin to match their surroundings and escape predators’ attention (though this theory has been relatively recently opposed by some scientists who sustain that the change of the colour of their skin is rather used by these reptiles to communicate and control their body temperature). Since for modern organizations gaining and maintaining competitive edge is crucially important, as chameleons these should aim at constantly growing throughout their lives. Being informed of what occurs in the external environment and about their competitors’ moves is clearly of pivotal importance, too; as chameleons, hence, organizations should be able to simultaneously look at two different directions with a 360-degree view and promptly focus on what they see.

Organizational culture cannot and should be not, nonetheless, only based on a defensive and adaptive approach; employers should attach great importance to their employee capability to come up with new ideas, develop new approaches and anticipate future trends, and should thus encourage everyone within the business to contribute in this sense. Innovation must be hence invariably regarded by employers as an additional important pillar of their organization culture; the most appropriate metaphor organizations can use to convey the message might hence be that of the innovative chameleon.

Clarify and spell out the intended objectives

Individuals are habitually willing and in many respects keen to accept and genuinely embrace change whether these understand and recognize the need for its introduction and the benefits it is intended to bring. Making clear what the reasons for change are and why this is actually necessary for the organization to maintain or expand its presence in the market would clearly help an employer to gain its employees’ support and active participation during the processes of change and strategy execution.

The direction identified by a company should enable this and its people to achieve success and in turn secure employees job stability. The circumstance strategy is implemented and change is eventually introduced to support the process, essentially with the aim of deriving a benefit to the organization, regardless of which this might be, has to be clearly outlined and explained to employees from the outset. It is indeed absolutely necessary that these become fully aware of the positive implications associated with the introduction of change and of how significant their support is in order for their employer to successfully pursue its intended strategy.

Employers must invariably avert talking the talk and do not walking the walk; employees would sooner or later find out whether these have supported their decisions with deceitful arguments and should such circumstance occur the consequences would definitely be disastrous and more often than not irreversible. First and foremost, employers need to gain their employees trust and confidence, which can definitely be regarded as a key prerequisite to establish an effective communication channel with individuals. Openness, transparency and trust should be thus invariably considered as features strongly characterizing corporate culture, but clearly not exclusively “on paper.”

Communications

Communication is of paramount importance more than usual; it essentially represents the only means enabling employers to provide employees a clear-sighted vision. All of the individuals composing the employee population need to have crystal clear ideas of the strategy identified by their employer, should gain a good understanding of how it can enable the organization to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage and thus genuinely back this. The establishment of an open, two-way communication channel can clearly facilitate the process.

Corporate culture, consistently with the aim of inspiring, building up and winning employee confidence and trust, should promote a transparent, honest communication ensuring employees to have their say. The aim of communications should not be hence limited to unveil and share with all the employees the plan of action developed by the employer, but should rather aim at enabling the employer to involve and bring on board all of its employees. Corporate culture should encourage employee continuous contribution and active participation, and encourage employees to continuously come up with and suggest new ideas.

Every individual should feel to be active part of the process and commit his/her contribution to the overall outcome produced by the organization as a whole.

Learning

In order for employees to actively become part of the process these have to be first and foremost put in a position to effectively contribute to organizational success. Involving in the pursuance of organizational strategy individuals who do not have the skills and capabilities required, would clearly produce counterproductive effects. Inasmuch as corporate culture needs to foster individual participation, commitment and contribution to organizational success, this has to encourage individual learning. Employers should thus invariably ensure and secure their employees to have access to the programmes enabling them to gain and expand the capabilities and knowledge necessary to effectually play their role.

A skilled employee population may indeed help employers to reverse the trend in terms of change in that knowledgeable and capable individuals may actually come up with new, ingenious ideas anticipating external pressures and proposing change from within. This circumstance would certainly be ideal, change would not be in fact imposed by others, but proposed by employees, which would thus perfectly know the benefits associated with its introduction and would instantly and naturally become change advocates.

The same result in terms of employee participation should be indeed ideally achieved also in those circumstances in which change is proposed by employers by reason of the pressure exerted by the exogenous environment. Involving employees in the project from the outset and establishing an appropriate two-way communication channel should definitely help employers to successfully perform the feat.

Reward

It can be contended that the old saying “money talks” still definitely holds true. Irrespective of the awareness managers may or may not have, the decisions they make in terms of reward clearly communicate and convey a precise message to employees, a message which individuals more often than not receive clearly and promptly. Whether corporate culture fosters individual participation and involvement, and some individuals behave as desired by the employer and yield the expected results, these need to be openly recognized. The introduction of this mechanism not only reinforces the importance of concepts like consistency and integrity within the business, but may also help employers to sustain and consolidate corporate culture and the tenets underpinning this.

Organizational culture should obviously foster individual commitment and participation, but it should also promote at the same time the employer willingness and readiness to recognize those who support the business in its quest to pursue its intended strategy and attain the desired objectives.

HRM Model

Consistency should be showed at all the organizational levels and layers, corporate culture should be thus consistent also with the HRM model adopted by the employer. It is not indeed just a matter of consistency; the HR management model underpinning the organization human capital practices should also noticeably support and sustain a company culture in that this is also essentially concerned with favouring and easing the attainment of the employer desired objectives.

Management commitment

Individuals will never commit to support their employer and let alone try to go the extra mile whether the organization management does not lead by example. The management commitment has hence to be gained from the very beginning and has to be sorely visible.

The role played by mangers in developing and shaping organizational culture is clearly much more than simply considerable. They have the responsibility to provide employees with a vision, support individuals during their working activities and make decisions about individual growth and hence future.

Mangers can definitely make or break corporate culture so that before appointing a new manager employers should definitely ensure that these have what it takes to properly perform their role and genuinely and truly support the organization strategy and culture. The findings of many studies reveal that bad management is indeed one of the most recurring causes for employees leaving their organization. Notwithstanding, managers are appointed by employers so that the responsibility for individuals leaving their organization ultimately rests with them. The circumstance an organization appoints the wrong person to fill the wrong position has to be essentially regarded as an employer blunder and whether after having made such a huge mistake employers do not take appropriate action it is likely that these will be called to pay for it anytime soon.

***

The great significance of organizational culture for strategy implementation and thus organizational success can be taken as axiomatic. The type of culture fostered by a company founder should be first of all consistent with and peculiar to the specific type of strategy this intends to pursue, the objectives this aims at attaining and the behaviour this expects individuals to exhibit. Nonetheless, employers should invariably shape and develop their businesses culture taking heed of some core, founding pillars such as readiness to change, flexibility, innovation, learning, recognition and open communication. On top of these components business founders, with the help of the organization management, should identify the other values and beliefs which they consider important to gain and maintain competitive advantage over their competitors.

Longo, R., (2015), How corporate culture supports strategy execution; Milan: HR Professionals.

The scale and pace of change: radical or incremental – rapid or gradual?

The frequency change takes place in the external environment, and hence in the organisational context, is relentlessly increasing; change, nonetheless, can differently impact an organization operations, structures, processes and procedures. Albeit change, with the opportunities it offers and the treats it poses, is nowadays affecting all the organizations at large, irrespective of their size and sector of industry, the impact and effect it produces in practice upon these are normally quite different; as it is indeed variable the relevance of the effect produced by the different types of change implemented over time within the same business. In the light of this aspect, a hypothetical representation of the change continuum would not result in a flat horizontal line, but rather in an uneven line characterised by the presence of several and irregular up and down levels as showed in table 1.

Table 1

When the magnitude of change is intended to produce remarkable effects upon the business and the individuals concerned the extent of change is habitually deemed radical; by contrast, whether change is expected to not considerably impact the business it is regarded as incremental. It can be hence argued that radical change seriously alters and impacts the organization status quo at large and that it is thus feared and resisted the most by the employees. In contrast, incremental change being perceived by individuals as less pervasive, intrusive and invasive is likely to give raise to weaker restraining forces, if any, to change. As suggested by Gallivan et al (1994), incremental change can be broadly considered as having a limited impact on businesses and people in that it just entails adjustments, partial modifications or improvement to the current products, norms, procedures, structures and knowledge; whereas radical change usually implies remarkable modifications, if not a complete replacement, of these components and can be thus definitely perceived as invasive by the individuals concerned.

This dimension of change, that is to say the scale or size of change, is associated with the degree and intensity of the effects change is expected to produce in terms of perceptions upon the individuals concerned. The opposite sides of the scale of change have been called in different ways over time: evolutionary and revolutionary (Greiner, 1972), first-order and second-order (Bartunek and Louis, 1988), incremental and radical (Meyer et al., 1990), transitional and transformational (Wilson, 1992), first-level and second-level (Jabri, 1997) and continuous and discontinuous (Weick and Quinn, 1999).

Another important dimension of change is represented by the pace, that is to say the speed change can be introduced and executed in practice within an organization. With reference to this facet, going from one extreme to the other, it is generally considered that change can be introduced and executed within a business either gradually or rapidly.

In order to make appropriate decisions about the most suitable approach to change, managers have to carefully consider the two different main implications associated with this aspect: the employer ability to contrast the restraining forces likely to emerge and its capacity to eventually amend the intended plans en route in order to attain the desired outcome and avert that the overall process may end in failure.

The advocates of the rapid approach (Van de Ven, 1993 and Peters, 1993) contend that implementing change rapidly, leaving little or no room for hindrance, can effectually help employers to better counterbalance and contrast employee resistance to change. According to this viewpoint, the circumstance that the “probationary period” of change is brief contributes to make it easier for change to successfully pass it. Yet, at least supposedly, over a short period of time it is less likely that the restraining forces eventually emerging may successfully associate and unite in order to fiercely oppose and contrast change. Individuals would need a while before finding out whereas the proposed change might actually threaten their personal interest and have detrimental effects upon their status quo, ultimately pushing them beyond their comfort zone.

In the same fashion but taking a different, or rather, opposite viewpoint, the supporters of the incremental approach aver that introducing change over a long period of time ensures change a longer trial period during which managers can eventually identify anomalies and miscalculations and manage these accordingly. In this way, whether during the execution process managers should realise that plans are inconsistent with the pre-identified objectives and that more in general these are not going ahead as expected, to the detriment of the pursuance of the envisaged original programme, these would still be in time to make the necessary adjustments.



Relationship between the scale and pace of change

During the last decades researchers have tried to investigate whether a linkage or even a cause effect relationship might be identified between the size and pace of change. Albeit these different studies have led to different and sometimes even contrasting results, a common view about the existence of a certain relationship between the two dimensions seems to transpire.

Hammer (1990) contended that radical change can effectively and successfully be achieved only by means of a rapid implementation process; by contrast, Tyre and Orlikowski (1994) suggested that a gradual, phased implementation of change is necessary to attain the final desired objective. To this extent, it might reveal to be sorely interesting comparing two different approaches to change management, that is to say the culture-excellence approach with the Japanese methodology.

The advocates of the culture-excellence approach, aiming at fostering innovation and stressing the significance of the soft qualities of individuals, do not seem to have reached a common consent as for what concerns the rhythm change has to be introduced and implemented. Peters (1993), for instance, suggested that employers should adopt a “big bang” approach to radical change management: “change radically and do it quickly”; Handy (1986), in contrast, supported a more gradual approach to radical change: “big changes over a long period”; whereas Kanter et al (1992) argued that a blended approach, based on a mix of these two extremes, would have represented the most appropriate methodology to the implementation of radical change. According to the latter method invasive, remarkable changes, especially when these are affecting behavioural aspects, can successfully be achieved over a longer period of time only. Notwithstanding, the Authors also recognized that, albeit radical change can effectually be attained only in the long run, employers should also preferably put in place some initiatives aiming at yielding tangible, immediate results. This is basically why this approach to change is defined as a combination of “bold strokes and long marches.”

The Japanese approach, also called organisational learning, is essentially based on a more focused and structured method where the design phase of change is basically concerned with the identification and creation of a vision and the execution phase with the implementation of the activities considered necessary to move towards the desired position by means of incremental steps (Burnes, 2009). This actually is a methodology typical of the Kaizen philosophy to management, also known as lean production. This approach is underpinned by the idea that businesses, to improve the quality of their output or more in general to attain efficiency, have to introduce and implement change gradually and continuously. Products and performance enhancement are thus achieved by means of incremental rather than rapid change.

The Japanese methodology is based on the idea that plans have to be ambitious and overarching and have to be gradually, but relentlessly pursued till their successful attainment. Notwithstanding, Burnes (2009) suggests that the effectiveness of this approach is debatable in that it is unlikely to produce valuable results in western countries, such as the US and the UK, where businesses can successfully implement radical change over a short period of time and where a built-in aversion to long-term thinking, especially within the financial service industry, which plays a pivotal role in the life of many other organizations, seems to dominate. According to Cawsey et al (2012), the Japanese entrepreneurs actually learned this approach from US management researchers such as Duran and Deming. Irrespective of this fact, it can be hardly averred that Japan is a country unaffected by the pressure coming from the exogenous environment. Since the most recognised Japanese employers operate in the automotive and electronics industries it is indeed difficult to imagine that these might afford to be late of a single day vis-à-vis their competitors in terms of innovation or that these are immune to the market pressure. This approach may perhaps rather explain the reasons why the Japanese economy has experienced so many hardships during the last years. Yet, the circumstance that from time to time some Japanese automotive manufacturers have to retire from the market large numbers of cars on account of the detection of some technical problems might induce to think that this approach is lately showing some signs of weakness, but this is a completely different topic.

Focusing back upon the pace and scale of change subject, a definitely compelling question arises whether a direct relationship between these two dimensions of change can be actually identified in practice; and more in particular whether it could be assumed that both radical and incremental change have to be implemented at a specific, universally recognised and pre-identified pace.

Employers can actually decide, and sometimes even be practically obliged, to introduce change for a wide variety of reasons. Yet, change can relate to different aspects of the organisational life; technology advancements, the need to change the organisation of work and the way activities are performed within a business only represent a very few examples of how change can remarkably impact an organisation. Change can indeed affect deeper, more pervasive and intangible aspects of the organisational life which may require in turn trickier, profounder and more thorough interventions such as those aiming at transforming an organisation culture or structure in order to more effectually sustain the business strategy. It can be hence agreed with Newman (1998) that change, and not necessarily only radical change as she contended, “is a process by which firms regain competitive advantage after it has been lost”, or rather, since prevention is invariably better than cure, before it might be lost.

As organisational wants can clearly be different and the specific circumstances, which are subject to change over time, clearly play a remarkable role in change decisions, to avert an inevitable, dismal failure the one-size-fits-all approach has to be definitely excluded. This clearly entails that it would be pointless and even counterproductive trying to establish a universal, precise and predetermined link between the size and pace of change. After having identified for each specific project the size of change, one of the most important decisions managers have to make actually concerns the speed change has to be practically introduced and implemented, but this has to be set as suggested by the different circumstances and by no means according to what the alleged best practice might suggest.

To identify the most appropriate, suitable speed at which change has to be introduced, some particularly significant factors have to be thoroughly and carefully analysed: first and foremost the context. Both the internal and external context in fact sensibly impact employers’ decisions.

  

When in the mid-1990s Mr Jong-Yong Yun was appointed as the new Samsung Group President and CEO, for instance, to identify the most appropriate speed at which implementing change within the company he clearly had to take into due consideration both the pressure coming from the external environment and the internal conditions. Albeit the main key to success was in that case represented by the type of strategy Mr. Yun decided to adopt, based on fostering and instilling a generalised sense of crisis within the business, he would have not clearly been able to attain the predetermined objectives whether the speed of change implementation would have not supported the identified strategy.

Mr Yun had to face at the time particularly exceptional circumstances; the external environment was marked by a severe recession affecting the entire Asian region and the organisational context was sorely unprepared to face the current adverse conditions. A restructuring process leading to a workforce reduction of about a third of the existing staff, the recruitment of 1,000 employees composed of American MBA graduates and PhD-level engineers, the introduction of profound changes in the firm’s management structure and a huge investment in technology are clearly self-explanatory of the scale of change the company had to undergone. Albeit under such circumstances Mr Yun had not really that many options available to him and had to necessarily opt for a rapid pace of change, this example clearly bespeaks the relevance and significance that the contextual factor has for employers decision about the speed change has to be introduced (Instilling a sense of crisis – Crisis v Urgency in change management (Instilling a sense of crisis – Crisis v Urgency in change management).

The exogenous context

The Samsung example helps to show that the pressure exerted by the external context plays indeed a remarkable role in the decision-making process aiming at identifying the right pace of change. Nonetheless, for ludicrous it might seem to be, the grim exogenous circumstances can at times actually help employers to accelerate the speed of change without giving rise to relevant, if any, restraining forces. Whenever an employer initiative aiming at introducing change is dictated and imposed by the exogenous environment in fact change is much more likely to be accepted by individuals. In such circumstances the pace of change can be accelerated with little or no risk that this might be severely opposed by employees, who will certainly be much more incline to accept change despite this might require them to leave their comfort zone. Under these circumstances, properly communicating employees the reasons, scope and necessity for change and how this can effectively and genuinely help the business to stay afloat and competitive in the market is more crucial than usual.

The influence exerted by the external context may not clearly take only the form of economic or financial hardships; technological advances, new legislation and many other factors may indeed prompt employers to introduce sensible changes within their business over time.

The endogenous context

Irrespective of the circumstance that change may be deemed as radical or incremental, employers would invariably ideally prefer to introduce and implement change as quickly as they can. The pace of the implementation of change actually turns to be an issue for employers in that, whether inappropriate, this might favour the emergence of restraining forces. Yet, the larger the magnitude of change, the harsher the likely resistance opposed by individuals to it. The pace of change has hence to be duly identified and adapted to the circumstances by employers in order to prevent restraining forces to emerge or the worse comes to the worst to eventually effectually enable employers to contrast and curb these.

As properly claimed by Boddy (2008), albeit employers aim at introducing change to alter the organisational state of play, the organisational context can in turn, even remarkably, impact employers initiatives. This is basically why, based on the businesses environmental characteristics, Pettigrew et al (1992) made a distinction between receptive and non-receptive organisational context to change, which may respectively naturally favour or oppose change.

An organization receptiveness or unreceptiveness to change depends on a number of factors, amongst these a particularly remarkable role is played by organisational culture. Organizations whose culture is based on fostering and stimulating continuous development and where individuals are encouraged to contribute new ways of organising and performing their own job activities can clearly be considered receptive organisations. These habitually are not only constantly ready to change, but also prepared to its rapid implementation. Other examples of receptive organisations can be considered those businesses whose culture fosters the need and readiness to capitalize on the latest technological advances.

In Samsung, which is nowadays one of the most, arguably the most, valued and trusted global consumer electronics manufacturer, culture is still based on fostering a sense of crisis and urgency. The tenet underpinning this idea is that, even though the business is performing incredibly well at the moment, it might take little for the positive trend suddenly and abruptly go into reverse.

It can be ultimately argued that the rate of change should be sorely associated with the real need, awareness and perception the same employees develop about change.

It cannot and should not be overlooked that also the general and financial conditions of an organisation may play a role. Whilst individuals could accept, for instance, a rapid radical change whether the business is experiencing severe financial hardships, these might oppose change or prefer a phased, incremental approach in those cases in which the business is financially strong.

According to the type of change, the pace could also be influenced by its magnitude. Taking as an example the introduction of a business-wide new technology, a sudden and too fast implementation could very likely produce a series of downsides and a knock-on effect on employers too. Whether people would not be properly and appropriately trained and put in a position to comfortably deal with the new system and procedures before definitively using these, the consequences might be detrimental for both parties. Especially when change affects different levels and units of the business a rapid, revolutionary approach, rather than a phased and evolutionary one, can clearly risk paralysing a business’ operations.

All-in-all, it can be concluded that the pace with which change is introduced by employers should be as faster as it could be reasonably sustained and justified. Individuals are habitually much more willing to accept a faster pace of even radical change whether this is perceived and considered as appropriate, pertinent, functional, proportionate and reasonable to the circumstances and to the attainment of the preset and communicated objectives. The identified and communicated objectives need in turn to be supportable and objectively significant. According to the different viewpoints this can be indeed considered as somewhat of a virtuous or vicious circle.

Individual comprehension and understanding can be ultimately considered equal to individual acceptance; whether there are genuine, good reasons for introducing change just clearly explaining these to employees will dramatically increase the employers’ chances to succeed.

Longo, R., (2013), The scale and pace of change: radical or incremental – rapid or gradual?, Milan: HR Professionals, [online].

Does culture eats strategy for breakfast?

The concept of corporate culture basically refers to the unwritten rules influencing and guiding the way employees perform their activities in the workplace, that is, “the way we do things around here”, and to the behaviour employers expect their employees to exhibit in the organizational settings, whereas organizational strategy is basically concerned with the identification of the direction an organization decides to point to and more in particular with what an employer needs to do to reach the identified position.

Inasmuch as organizational strategy is concerned with the “what” side of the process aiming at identifying and attaining the organizational objectives, corporate culture is concerned with the “how” side of the same course of action. Organizational strategy and corporate culture can thus be regarded as the two sides of the same coin: organizational success. As such, it might apparently seem making no point contending that “culture eats strategy.” Since the dictum “culture eats strategy for breakfast” is used to stress the circumstance that culture prevails over strategy, it might provide the idea that “how” things are done in the workplace is more important than “what” organizations should do to achieve competitive edge. This may lead to a situation in which employees actually know how to do things and how to go somewhere, but have indeed no idea of what the employer wants and where this aspires to go. The meaning behind the assumption “culture eats strategy”, however, is not as simplistic as it might apparently seem to be.

The dictum “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, attributed to Peter Drucker, become popular in 2006 when Ford Motor’s president Mark Fields during a public speech, taking heed of the experience he had gained when working at Ford, emphasized the remarkable significance of the role played by a supporting culture throughout the implementation of change. The significance of this statement and the idea behind it clearly have far-reaching implications.

The need for change emerges nowadays at an increasingly faster pace; it is hence of paramount importance for organizations being flexible enough to, if anything, promptly adapt to the impulses coming from the exogenous environment. The introduction of change, notwithstanding, is habitually likely to be opposed by antagonistic forces, better known as restraining forces, which more often than not are so strong as to seriously risk jeopardizing the successful implementation of the overall change project.

A supportive culture indisputably plays a fundamental part in the effectual introduction and implementation of change in a business. Despite the increasing pace at which change occurs in the exogenous environment, corporate culture, whose speed of change has actually lately increased too, is unlikely to be subject to change at the same pace as that characterizing the external context.

Employers habitually encounter considerable, sharp resistance when implementing change processes within their organizations. Yet, most of these projects actually miserably fail in that organizational culture not only proves not to be supportive of the process, but what worse actually favours the emergence of a strong resistance to its successful implementation. Employers at large are well-aware of the dangers caused by the restraining forces to change insofar as, in most of the cases, needing to implement change procedures concerned with organizational culture prior to introduce other types of change, which may affect the entire or the largest part of the business.

This does not clearly mean that changing culture is a straightforward process; on the contrary, the processes of change concerned with organizational culture invariably prove to be the most difficult processes to manage insofar as some practitioners suggest never drastically changing organizational culture (revolutionary approach), but rather working on it moulding and adapting it as better as possible to the changed circumstances (gradual approach).

Changing organizational culture invariably shows to be a very tricky exercise; notwithstanding, it sorely depends on how deeply a company culture is rooted in the business: deeply-rooted cultures obviously represent the hardest type of culture to change, whereas corporate cultures underpinned by readiness to change typically constitute the kind of culture most likely to be promptly altered. In the latter case, culture is indeed likely to be amended more straightforwardly and the implementation of change expected to encounter limited, if any, employee resistance.

As it actually nowadays happens with change at large, also corporate culture, using Lewin’s wording, should ideally be kept somewhat of in a state of constant “movement” and never be allowed to “refreeze” after the conclusion of a process of change. This despite, external pressure notwithstanding, corporate culture is not habitually subject to change at the same pace at which, for instance, technology, products, services and external markets trends are.

A completely different idea on the subject is advanced by Thomson, who maintains that an organization can be successful in the long-term only whether it is supported by a “viable corporate culture” which also has to be a “long-term culture” (Alofs, 2012). This view can be actually regarded as debatable in that long-term cultures will certainly become well-rooted cultures at some point in the future; giving thus rise to harsh resistance once the need to change these emerges.

As for what concerns business strategy, trying to determine whether this could be regarded as good or bad would definitely prove to be a pointless exercise. The most relevant features of strategy are arguably represented by consistency and coherence; the direction identified by the employer must essentially be that enabling this to attain its intended objectives and most of all to gain competitive advantage over its competitors. Corporate culture should be in turn consistent and coherent with the direction an organization intends to pursue. In order to effectually help employers to attain their intended objectives culture should hence be necessarily supportive of organizational strategy. As long as organizational culture will help employers to go where they have planned and intend to go this could be indeed deemed strong.

Employers should invariably pay particular attention to culture; these might also fail to pursue their strategy, but this should never occur for reasons related to the inadequacy of the culture these have fostered within the organization. The exogenous environment poses in fact enough threats of its own so that employers have to do whatever they can to avert additional problems arising from within.

As the right culture for an organization is that enabling this to attain its intended aims and objectives, corporate culture should theoretically change at the same pace at which strategy does. This entails that since strategy changes at an increasingly faster speed also organizational culture should. Yet, an increased frequency of change should enable employers to avert that the current culture may reach or stay for an exceedingly long period of time in the “refreezing” phase referred to by Lewin as the final stage of his change management model. This mechanism should in turn enable employers to develop and implement change management processes more confidently and with much more chances to be successful. On the other hand, nonetheless, changing too often corporate culture may cause confusion, mistrust and uncertainty amongst employees and give thus rise in the workplace to the formation of stronger restraining forces to change over time. Moreover, the activation of a process of constant cultural change may not invariably prove to be viable.

According to the circumstances, a change in strategy might not necessarily invariably entail a change in culture; yet, the culture existent in an organization may show to be effective to support the employer in the attainment of the identified objectives albeit these are subject to changes over time. Rather than constantly changing culture, with the risk of making unnecessary adjustments, employers should hence try to do whatever they can to develop and foster a culture supportive of change and organizational success, averting to revise it unless genuinely necessary. Cultures fostering innovation and flexibility are the less likely to cause the emergence of restraining forces. Under some circumstances, business leaders try to achieve this result instilling a constant sense of urgency, which whether not properly managed can in the mid- to long-term make employees feel under somewhat of an eternal state of siege and cause stress, anxiety and ultimately distress.

The best culture is that underpinned by the right values, which regardless of the circumstances and strategy pursued by a business remains invariably significant and appropriate. In general, it should be avoided to introduce “alien cultures” based on top-down, command and control management, nowadays very likely to prove to be sorely inappropriate and ineffective.

Culture clearly exerts a remarkable power and influence over strategy, but also strategy, that is to say the direction an organization wants to go to in order to achieve competitive edge, should be in turn capable to influence culture. For right or wrong a strategy might be perceived to be by employees, employers develop these in order to attain the business objectives and yield results for the benefit of their employees too.

Strong cultures can act as powerful motivators and are clearly of paramount importance for organizational success, these must support and favour the attainment of the organizational objectives, whereas do not have to contribute by any means to threat the organizational stability from within, in addition to the hazards and threats already posed by the exogenous environment.

Having a strong organizational culture, but not having an effective strategy can be tantamount to having tens of thousands of barrels filled up with oil whilst not having a car or akin to having a fantastic sport car and letting it standing still into the carport in that do not having any idea of where to go.

Organizational culture practically exerts a much stronger influence on individual motivation than strategy, but employees need to be aware of the importance that it has for their employers achieving their intended objectives and should hence support these in the quest. To receive the adequate support from their employees and provide these with more meaningful insight about organizational strategy, employers should involve as many individuals as they can in the strategy definition process.

Corporate culture is clearly as important as strategy; the two should not be indeed considered separately the one from the other, it is in fact just by virtue of the consistent combination of these two powerful components that employers can actually confidently and bravely strive in the market to gain competitive edge.

Corporate culture can potentially eats strategy, no matter whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner, but employers should do whatever they can to avert this to happen and make understand their entire workforce, by means of their involvement and the activation of a clear and open communication process, how significant is for them to achieve their intended objectives and yield the expected results. For the sake of the overall business stability and existence, employers should also clearly make individuals understand that it would really be ludicrous whether they should not achieve their intended results by reason of the lack of support of their staff. The market and competitors pose enough serious threats so that the organization resources and efforts should be definitely used to struggle in the exogenous environment, rather than in the endogenous.

Longo, R., (2012), Does culture eats strategy for breakfast?, HR Professionals, Milan, [online].