HOW DOES CULTURE DEFINE BUSINESS?

THEEmployer Branding Institute, a virtual organisation that is represented in 99 countries and that awards Best Employers Award noted as follows “How people feel about the Employer Branding is increasingly critical to business success or failure.”

That “Leading companies realise its importance in attracting and engaging the people, they need to deliver profitable growth and they are also beginning to recognise that creating a positive brand experience for employees requires the same degree of focus, care and coherence that has long characterised effective management of the customer brand experience”

Employer branding is about how a company identifies itself to prospective stakeholders, in the same way that it would in selling its products and services.

So what is it that ensures that employees feel about the employer’s branding? What is it that dictates how an employee feels about the company or organisation?

In most of surveys conducted worldwide around employee’s engagement and therefore the perspective of employer’s branding, it has been the view about what it is like to work at a company that potential employees seeks to understand and this links in with the culture and values of the company from an employee’s perspectives.

In other words, the culture of an organisation is an important component of what differentiates successful companies to those that fall in the shadow of success.

Culture is an agreed set of norms, i.e. the attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, and customs that are ingrained in the business members, team, or group that helps guide how the business interact with others.

Mirriam Webster dictionary defines culture as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterises an institution or organisation.

The culture of an organisation exist whether one chooses to focus on it or not, but its pervasiveness means that it will influence the sort of customers that are attracted to the business including the services that are delivered and in turn the organisation growth. As such it is important to understand the organisation culture and seek to influence its acceptance.

Another way to put it is that, other than an organisation’s business model, culture is increasingly seen as the most important factor for the business’ long-term success. The importance of an organisation culture can perhaps be summed up, this way.

It is those set of values and beliefs that influence to a large extent how employees reacts to organisational circumstances, perhaps how an organisation sees challenges or how it interacts with its various stakeholders.

So what are the various ways that culture of an organisation will define business?

Management Style – The culture of an organisation will influence the management style in an organisation. While It is well understood that the management styles tend to be different from country to country and there is no one size fit style that is effective for the various types of groups, it is increasingly clear and accepted that certain values as well as leadership styles provides a better outcome for a business organisation.

In Zambia, for instance, there is generally a top down type of leadership that is mostly influenced by the traditional system of leadership, where decisions are almost always going to be top down, with the subordinates almost always consigned to act on instructions.

This style of management does tend to produce employees that are often afraid to speak frankly about topics of importance to the company for fear of being reprimanded by higher ups, in turn stifling innovation and new ideas and this may perhaps be the reason that international companies tend to outperform local companies in Zambia.

2. Communication Style - Every culture has rules that its members take for granted and the cultural imprinting to the organisation members will always be present whether or not done consciously.

Although culture has no way of watering down differences in the way people communicate, every aspect of communication is biased by some cultural underpinning.

When I was abroad, I was often surprised by how many people preferred to communicate by email more than in interpersonal setting.

One could argue that the reason is email serves time, and this could also be true, but it is also in itself an admission that there may be a culture that may have developed from an underlying need to be mindful of time.

In culture and communication style, Giri (2006) wrote that “culture and communication styles have great influence on each other. That with changing times, the social-economic conditions of individuals are also changing.

The effect of this behaviour is reflected in the communication behaviours of people. Past experience, perception and cultural background greatly affect the way people talk and behave. Culture plays and important role in shaping the style of communication. Generally people react to how we speak rather than what we say, it is not in single instances of communication that culture is made, but rather in the repeated exchange of information and the reinforcement of the ideals and values it embodies, all conveyed within a particular moment. Therefore it cannot be overemphasized about the importance of actively managing culture to foster a certain way of communicating with stakeholders.

3. Negotiations Styles - Business outcomes are often influenced by how someone approaches negotiations and the organisation culture plays an important role in setting how one behaves. It is possible that the organisation by its expectation may be encouraging its employees to be more aggressive or conversely, very risk averse and therefore more cautious. Each of those extreme behaviours can be detrimental in negotiations with the result that business is lost. Salacuse (2004) put it much more succinctly in an article titled ‘Negotiating: The Top Ten Ways that Culture Can Affect Your Negotiation’ writing that “When Enron was still – and only – a pipeline company, it lost a major contract in India because local authorities felt that it was pushing negotiations too fast. In fact, the loss of the contract underlines the important role that cultural differences play in international negotiation. For one country’s negotiators, time is money; for another’s, the slower the negotiations, the better and more trust in the other side.”

There are various ways that culture can influence the direction of the business and therefore management must seek to understand the sort of culture that persist in their organisation and its influence on business outcomes.

If corporate culture that support the business objectives, there is much to gain from a potential increase in business performance and enhanced employee engagement. The alternative is businesses that lag their international equivalent.

About the author: Kelvin Chungu is a Partner at Nolands Advisory Services Limited. He is contactable on kelvinc@nolands.co.zm or +260976-377484.

The effect of this behaviour is reflected in the communication behaviours of people. Past experience, perception and cultural background greatly affect the way people talk and behave. Culture plays and important role in shaping the style of communication.