Corporate Culture

In the early 1980s, Terry Deal and Allan Kennedy launched a new field of inquiry and practice with the publication of their landmark book, Corporate Cultures, in which they argued that distinct types of cultures evolve within companies, with a direct and measurable impact on strategy and performance. Despite the dramatic evolution of the business landscape over the last twenty years, the basic principles of the book remain as fresh and relevant as they did when it was first published: that organizations, by their very nature, are social enterprises, with tribal habits, well-defined cultural roles for individuals, and various strategies for determining inclusion, reinforcing identity, and adapting to change. In the new introduction, the authors reflect on the enduring lessons of their investigation into the life of organizations.

To succeed in the global marketplace for new goods and services, American corporations must learn how to innovate and develop new businesses better and faster than their competition. To do this requires a special culture--one that is much different from the traditional culture of American business. Oden's unique book looks for the first time at the relationships among these elements--innovation, intrapreneurship, and corporate culture--and points out how these three elements can be integrated to achieve the maximum advantage in global competition. A concise but comprehensive, readable text and resource for corporate management, professionals involved in product development, and teachers and students with special interest in organizational development, innovation, and intrapreneurship.

Fifteen years after publishing Corporate Cultures, Deal and Kennedy discuss the negative affects of recent economic forces (globalization and technology) and management trends (downsizing, outsourcing, short-termism, and mergers). They show managers how to exercise cultural leadership by finding common ground among corporate subcultures, and call for corporations to institute performance measurement systems that emphasize long-term goals.

This work considers how organizations operate as spaces in which minds are gendered and men and women constructed. It brings together four powerful themes that have developed within the field of organizational analysis over the past 20 years.

This book focuses on the importance of organizational and human factors in the long-term success of mergers. While the failure of many of the 1980's mergers points to the need to implement the merger of two organizations as cultural entities, much of the focus has been on pre-merger financial planning. This volume explores the roles of organizational culture, strategy, leadership, and structure in combining two organizations. Special attention is paid to the need for the two merger partners to negotiate the process of implementation rather than to have similar cultures.

This book highlights the influence of business on culture and traces the increasingly dominant role that business plays in shaping social and cultural experience. It argues that in the contemporary world, the dividing line between commerce and culture is becoming increasingly blurred and that business practices and values now dominate the material, intellectual and spiritual life of the community. This general thesis is illustrated with material from economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, art, biography, literature, film, theater, television, technology, and computer science--- material drawn together by the common thread of business.

Experts in the fields of organizational politics and justice explore the nuances of organizational life. They analyze how these concepts work alone and in concert with each other to influence employees' perceptions of and reactions to their organizations. One argument concludes that managers use politics to compensate for the inadequacies in the current approach to human resources management, while another finds that support and justice benefit the employer, not the employee. Practitioners and scholars in human resources, organizational behavior, psychology, and business law will find new and controversial interpretations of human behavior in the workplace.

'Throughout, Bjerke carefully cites the supporting literature of the general social sciences as well as that of management and business organization. The volume's cumulative development is impressive in its marshalling of the diverse approaches and insights while probing into the special characteristics of each of the five national cultures selected.... Recommended for international business collections, upper-division undergraduate through professional.' - J.C. Thompson, Choice How do business leaders think as a result of their national culture? This book provides a discussion and comparative analysis of five major cultures - American, Arab, Chinese, Japanese and Scandinavian - and how they reveal themselves in business practice. The author begins by introducing the concept of culture and why it is important, addressing issues such as values, beliefs and assumptions and the consequences of these. Björn Bjerke then goes on to address corporate culture and business strategy as well as some myths associated with national cultures. Looking at the five specific cultures he addresses cultural themes and presents a typified picture of the business leader in each of these. He concludes that there are five different capitalist systems governing these cultures, and that the business leader plays a different role in each. Extending this discussion, the author questions whether the culture-free business leader exists and, if so, what the characteristics of such a person might be. Business Leadership and Culture will enlighten students, scholars and business people about the consequences of culture for international business and management.

Music Genres and Corporate Cultures explores the seemingly haphazard workings of the music industry, tracing the uneasy relationship between economics and culture; 'entertainment corporations' and the artists they sign. Keith Negus examines the contrasting strategies of major labels like Sony and Polygram in managing different genres, artists and staff. How do takeovers affect the treatment of artists? Why has Polygram been perceived as too European to attract US artists? And how did Warner's wooden floors help them sign Green Day? Through in-depth case studies of three major genres; rap, country, and salsa, Negus explores the way in which the music industry recognises and rewards certain sounds, and how this influences both the creativity of musicians, and their audiences. He examines the tension between raps public image as the spontaneous 'music of the streets' and the practicalities of the market, and asks why country labels and radio stations promote top-selling acts like Garth Brooks over hard-to-classify artists like Mary Chapin-Carpenter, and how the lack of soundscan systems in Puerto Rican record shops affects salsa music's position on the US Billboard chart. Drawing on over seventy interviews with music industry personnel in Britain and the United States, Music Genres and Corporate Cultures shows how the creation, circulation and consumption of popular music is shaped by record companies and corporate business styles while stressing that music production takes within a broader culture, not totally within the control of large corporations.

This book explores the daily work lives and learning experiences of programmers and other professionals in the computer-software industry. The book focuses on the staff of one small software firm, allowing workers to tell their own stories, describing their work and their use of all the resources available to them in learning the complex systems they are required to develop and maintain. Based in qualitative sociological method, it is an ethnography of a business setting as well as a study of learning.