The Invisible Hand of the Corporate Culture
How Relationships Trump Hierarchy in Organizational Performance
Aug 26, 2009
It is broad and deep in that it guides individual actions even to the extent that members are not aware they are being influenced by it.
The source of any organization’s culture is grounded in a set of notions about the nature of the business and human relationships within it. An example would be how the belief that people are out for themselves could influence attitudes and behaviors toward outside salespeople and vendors.
The Invisible Hand of the Corporate Culture
While powerful, the influence of culture is largely invisible and unknown to an organization’s members. This is what adds the value to the effort to fully account for all parts of a company’s culture. The more dominant attributes can generally be identified fairly quickly. Some of the subculture features require more investigation to understand.
The success of many Japanese firms in the late 1970s and 1980s was the catalyst for corporations here to begin to take note of the different way they approached business. Unlike the national culture in the United States which is founded upon individualism, Japanese firms had a more team-centered approach. This basic understanding affected the way that Japanese companies structured their companies and approached problems and business issues.
How Relationships Trump Hierarchy in Organizational Performance
Their organizations operated more like families and they valued unity, a constructive working environment, group commitment, and loyalty. Their organizations were made up of autonomous teams that had the ability to hire and fire their own members and employees were expected to participate in determining how things would get done.
Some examples of this type of organization can be found here but they are the exception rather than the rule. One example would be the Lincoln Electric Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Lincoln has established a solid set of relationships with its workers, customers, shareholders, suppliers, the community, and the environment. According to their company statement of beliefs, they aim to provide their employees with “human resources systems reflective of our core values and our commitment to attract, reward, develop and motivate high quality people.”
It is almost incomprehensible to think that people can exist together in a social setting or even a business without someone being in charge. That belief is one of the threads of the typical business here that ties it together. It is also the single biggest obstacle to building a set of high quality relationships within an organization. Without those relationships the culture will stagnate instead of flourish.
Enter the Office Politics
This is one reason why experiencing an authentic and productive set of relationships among members of an organization is so difficult. Once a hierarchical structure is established, the next step that typically follows is the creation of the rules and policies to administer it and protect it from threats. This in turn leads to the chain of command that while well intended ends up tearing down relationships rather that promoting them. The hierarchy imposes the very set of rules and policies that get in the way.
So people adapt. Since relationship is no longer a real possibility, competition steps in to take its place. The problem is this competition generally lies below the surface. The result is office politics with the appearance of relationship showing on the surface but the more real tug of the undercurrent of this internal competition underneath being the reality.
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