Corporate Culture and Performance

by John P. Kotter

Author	: John P. Kotter
Publisher	: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages	: 236
Release	: 2008-06-30
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 1439107602

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Going far beyond previous empirical work, John Kotter and James Heskett provide the first comprehensive critical analysis of how the "culture" of a corporation powerfully influences its economic performance, for better or for worse. Through painstaking research at such firms as Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, ICI, Nissan, and First Chicago, as well as a quantitative study of the relationship between culture and performance in more than 200 companies, the authors describe how shared values and unwritten rules can profoundly enhance economic success or, conversely, lead to failure to adapt to changing markets and environments. With penetrating insight, Kotter and Heskett trace the roots of both healthy and unhealthy cultures, demonstrating how easily the latter emerge, especially in firms which have experienced much past success. Challenging the widely held belief that "strong" corporate cultures create excellent business performance, Kotter and Heskett show that while many shared values and institutionalized practices can promote good performances in some instances, those cultures can also be characterized by arrogance, inward focus, and bureaucracy -- features that undermine an organization's ability to adapt to change. They also show that even "contextually or strategically appropriate" cultures -- ones that fit a firm's strategy and business context -- will not promote excellent performance over long periods of time unless they facilitate the adoption of strategies and practices that continuously respond to changing markets and new competitive environments. Fundamental to the process of reversing unhealthy cultures and making them more adaptive, the authors assert, is effective leadership. At the heart of this groundbreaking book, Kotter and Heskett describe how executives in ten corporations established new visions, aligned and motivated their managers to provide leadership to serve their customers, employees, and stockholders, and thus created more externally focused and responsive cultures.

Corporate Culture and Performance

by John P. Kotter

Author	: John P. Kotter
Publisher	: Free Press
Total Pages	: 0
Release	: 2011-05-16
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 9781451655322

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Going far beyond previous empirical work, John Kotter and James Heskett provide the first comprehensive critical analysis of how the "culture" of a corporation powerfully influences its economic performance, for better or for worse. Through painstaking research at such firms as Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, ICI, Nissan, and First Chicago, as well as a quantitative study of the relationship between culture and performance in more than 200 companies, the authors describe how shared values and unwritten rules can profoundly enhance economic success or, conversely, lead to failure to adapt to changing markets and environments. With penetrating insight, Kotter and Heskett trace the roots of both healthy and unhealthy cultures, demonstrating how easily the latter emerge, especially in firms which have experienced much past success. Challenging the widely held belief that "strong" corporate cultures create excellent business performance, Kotter and Heskett show that while many shared values and institutionalized practices can promote good performances in some instances, those cultures can also be characterized by arrogance, inward focus, and bureaucracy -- features that undermine an organization's ability to adapt to change. They also show that even "contextually or strategically appropriate" cultures -- ones that fit a firm's strategy and business context -- will not promote excellent performance over long periods of time unless they facilitate the adoption of strategies and practices that continuously respond to changing markets and new competitive environments. Fundamental to the process of reversing unhealthy cultures and making them more adaptive, the authors assert, is effective leadership. At the heart of this groundbreaking book, Kotter and Heskett describe how executives in ten corporations established new visions, aligned and motivated their managers to provide leadership to serve their customers, employees, and stockholders, and thus created more externally focused and responsive cultures.

Win from Within

by James Heskett

Author	: James Heskett
Publisher	: Columbia University Press
Total Pages	: 274
Release	: 2022-01-04
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 0231554826

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There is significant evidence that an effective organizational culture provides a major competitive edge—higher levels of employee and customer engagement and loyalty translate into higher growth and profits. Many business leaders know this, yet few are doing much to improve their organizations’ cultures. They are discouraged by misguided beliefs that an executive’s tenure and an organization’s attention span are too short for meaningful transformation. James Heskett provides a roadmap for achievable and fast-paced culture change. He demonstrates that an effective culture supplies the trust that makes managing change of all kinds easier. It provides a foundation on which changes in strategy can be based, and it’s a competitive edge that can’t easily be hacked or copied. Examining leading companies around the world, Heskett details how organizational culture makes employees more loyal, more productive, and more creative. He discusses how to quantify its effects in order to sell the notion of culture change to the organization and considers how to preserve an organization’s culture in the face of the trend toward remote work hastened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Showing how leadership can bring about significant changes in a surprisingly short time span, Win from Within offers a playbook for developing and deploying culture that enables outsized results. It is a groundbreaking demonstration of organizational culture’s role as a foundation for strategic success—and its measurable impact on the bottom line.

The Culture Cycle

by James L. Heskett

Author	: James L. Heskett
Publisher	: FT Press
Total Pages	: 385
Release	: 2012
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 0132779781

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The contribution of culture to organizational performance is substantial and quantifiable. In The Culture Cycle, renowned thought leader James Heskett demonstrates how an effective culture can account for 20-30% of the differential in performance compared with "culturally unremarkable" competitors. Drawing on decades of field research and dozens of case studies, Heskett introduces a powerful conceptual framework for managing culture, and shows it at work in a real-world setting. Heskett's "culture cycle" identifies cause-and-effect relationships that are crucial to shaping effective cultures, and demonstrates how to calculate culture's economic value through "Four Rs": referrals, retention, returns to labor, and relationships. This book: Explains how culture evolves, can be shaped and sustained, and serve as the organization's "internal brand." Shows how culture can promote innovation and survival in tough times. Guides leaders in linking culture to strategy and managing forces that challenge it. Shows how to credibly quantify culture's impact on performance, productivity, and profits. Clarifies culture's unique role in mission-driven organizations. A follow-up to the classic Corporate Culture and Performance (authored by Heskett and John Kotter), this is the next indispensable book on organizational culture. "Heskett (emer., Harvard Business School) provides an exhaustive examination of corporate policies, practices, and behaviors in organizations." Summing Up: Recommended. Reprinted with permission from CHOICE, copyright by the American Library Association.

Corporate Culture

by Eric Flamholtz

Author	: Eric Flamholtz
Publisher	: Stanford University Press
Total Pages	: 261
Release	: 2011-04-08
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 0804777543

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Organizational culture is a quiet, but driving, influence on our perception of a company, whether as a consumer or as an employee. For instance, we know Southwest Airlines as laid back and friendly. We think of Google as innovative. To almost every well-known company we can assign a character. It is now well recognized that corporate culture has a significant impact on organizational health and performance. Yet, the concept of corporate culture and culture management is too often tantalizingly elusive. In this book, Flamholtz and Randle define culture, identifying and explaining the five key dimensions that determine it: a customer orientation; a people orientation; a process orientation; strong standards of performance and accountability; innovation and openness to change. They explain why culture is a critical factor in organizational success and failure—a key determinant of financial performance. Then, they provide a theoretically sound, highly practical, and field-tested method for managing corporate culture—presenting a set of international and domestic cases that show how actual companies have leveraged culture as the ultimate source of sustainable competitive advantage. In addition to well-known companies such as Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, American Express, IBM, and Toyota, the text presents lesser known culture stars, such as Smartmatic and Infogix. While other titles on culture have focused too heavily on the organization as a psychological being, or on academic studies of culture as a business lever, Corporate Culture draws on empirics to present a go-to, must-read guide for leveraging corporate culture as a source of competitive advantage and as a means of impacting the bottom line.

The Power of Company Culture

by Chris Dyer

Author	: Chris Dyer
Publisher	: Kogan Page Publishers
Total Pages	: 193
Release	: 2018-02-03
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 074948196X

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WINNER: Independent Press Award 2018 - Business General Category Culture is the foundation for success in any organization. It's no coincidence that the companies with the strongest cultures not only consistently top the leaderboards of best places to work but also have the most engaged workforces, are the most in-demand employers and have the strongest financial performance. The Power of Company Culture debunks the myth that a remarkable company culture is something that a business either has or hasn't and shows how any company of any size can implement and maintain a world-class culture for business success. Structured around the seven pillars of culture success, The Power of Company Culture shows how to develop a company culture that improves productivity, performance, staff retention, company reputation and profits. Packed full of insights from leading practitioners at the forefront of developing outstanding company cultures including Michael Arena, Chief Talent Officer at General Motors, and Shari Conaway, Director of People at Southwest Airlines, this is essential reading for all HR Managers and business leaders who are responsible for building, monitoring and managing culture in their organizations.

Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company

by Kevin Oakes

Author	: Kevin Oakes
Publisher	: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages	: 353
Release	: 2021-01-12
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 1260464377

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Seize and expand the competitive edge with a smart, well-managed culture “renovation” Most business leaders understand the power of a dynamic, positive culture—but almost every effort to change culture fails. Why? The approach is often all wrong. Rather than attempt to “transform” a new culture from the ground up, leaders need to instead spearhead a culture renovation. It’s all about keeping what works, changing what needs to be changed, and ensuring proper care and maintenance—much like refurbishing and living in a beautiful historic home and improving its overall value. In Culture Renovation, the head of the world’s leading HR research firm—the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp)—Kevin Oakes provides tangible, tactical insights drawn from a robust data set and informed by CEOs and HR leaders at many of the world’s top companies. You’ll find everything you need to rebuild your corporate culture with care and expertise, including: Three phases and detailed action steps for architecting the change you want to see Practical insights and examples from T-Mobile, Microsoft, 3M, and other top companies The traits of a healthy corporate culture Proven talent practices to maintain your new culture for long-term success Oakes identifies 18 proven leadership actions for turning any culture into an agile, resilient, and innovative high-performance organization. You’ll learn how to best understand the culture in place today and set a new cultural path for decades to come; develop a co-creation mindset; identify influencers and blockers; ferret out skeptics and non-believers; measure, monitor, and report progress; and implement “next practices” in talent strategies to sustain the renovation. Culture Renovation delivers everything you need to plan, build, and maintain a corporate culture that drives profits, growth, and business sustainability now and well into the future.

The New Corporate Cultures

by Terrence E. Deal

Author	: Terrence E. Deal
Publisher	: Basic Books
Total Pages	: 324
Release	: 2008-08-05
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 0786725192

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In the early '80s, Allan Kennedy and Terry Deal launched a new field of inquiry and practice, with the publication of Corporate Cultures, in which they argued that distinct types of cultures evolve within companies and have a direct impact on strategy and performance. Fifteen years later, the authors have teamed up to assess the effects of globalization, short-termism, technology, downsizing, outsourcing, mergers, and reengineering on corporate culture. They find that despite these tremendous pressures, organizations, by their very nature, will create self-reinforcing communities; the pattern today is for mini-cultures to form within the larger corporation. The challenge for managers and leaders at all levels is to find ways to knit these cultures together to unleash learning and encourage everyone to take ownership and pride in their work. Taking examples from innovative companies around the world, the authors offer new strategies for "exercising cultural leadership," -- rebuilding the cultural fabric of the organization, energizing the workforce, enhancing corporate performance, and preparing for new challenges in the 21st century.

Enhancing Organizational Performance

by National Research Council

Author	: National Research Council
Publisher	: National Academies Press
Total Pages	: 298
Release	: 1997-04-02
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 0309175828

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Total quality management (TQM), reengineering, the workplace of the twenty-first centuryâ€"the 1990s have brought a sense of urgency to organizations to change or face stagnation and decline, according to Enhancing Organizational Performance. Organizations are adopting popular management techniques, some scientific, some faddish, often without introducing them properly or adequately measuring the outcome. Enhancing Organizational Performance reviews the most popular current approaches to organizational changeâ€"total quality management, reengineering, and downsizingâ€"in terms of how they affect organizations and people, how performance improvements can be measured, and what questions remain to be answered by researchers. The committee explores how theory, doctrine, accepted wisdom, and personal experience have all served as sources for organization design. Alternative organization structures such as teams, specialist networks, associations, and virtual organizations are examined. Enhancing Organizational Performance looks at the influence of the organization's norms, values, and beliefsâ€"its cultureâ€"on people and their performance, identifying cultural "levers" available to organization leaders. And what is leadership? The committee sorts through a wealth of research to identify behaviors and skills related to leadership effectiveness. The volume examines techniques for developing these skills and suggests new competencies that will become required with globalization and other trends. Mergers, networks, alliances, coalitionsâ€"organizations are increasingly turning to new intra- and inter-organizational structures. Enhancing Organizational Performance discusses how organizations cooperate to maximize outcomes. The committee explores the changing missions of the U.S. Army as a case study that has relevance to any organization. Noting that a musical greeting card contains more computing power than existed in the entire world before 1950, the committee addresses the impact of new technologies on performance. With examples, insights, and practical criteria, Enhancing Organizational Performance clarifies the nature of organizations and the prospects for performance improvement. This book will be important to corporate leaders, executives, and managers; faculty and students in organizational performance and the social sciences; business journalists; researchers; and interested individuals.