Corporate culture in 2022: how to define it?
A catch-all term, a real anchored value or an uncertain detail? These are the different characteristics that can be heard when talking about corporate culture. From the shaping of the first organizations to the Industrial Revolution, this definition has evolved and gone through several metamorphoses. The company was seen more as a family entity before migrating to a vision that relates to culture. Nowadays, how do you correctly qualify a company and its culture, how do you identify it and know if it coincides with yourself ?
Entrepreneurial Contextualization
Before we can even talk about corporate culture, we need to look at the different definitions that have been used to qualify an entrepreneurial group.
In the 19th century, the company was like a family: employees and a boss who acted as a father figure. The latter acts to protect the interests of employees and help them, it is a very paternalistic vision that was quickly criticized. Subsequently, the company takes the form of a house that surrounds, protects and unites its employees. The management of potential conflicts is only carried out internally. In this way, conflicts have borders so that they do not leave the house and degenerate into social movements.
Around the 70s, it was the vision of the company as a team that would take precedence. From now on, the practices of integration, motivation and mobilization of staff will be inspired by sports competitions. The boss then takes on the role of captain. In this team, employees must be flexible, responsive, flexible and loyal to their captain and team in the organization. Then, we arrive in the 80s when, for the first time, the term "culture" will appear. The notion of corporate culture will designate "a framework of thought, a system of rules, languages, beliefs and values relatively organized by the company and shared by its members". Today, the company is seen as a culture and this notion will endure and impose itself in managerial language.
Corporate culture
According to the American sociologist Edgar Schein, corporate culture is a way of conceptualizing an organization as an entity that generates several bonds of belonging. We will therefore conceive of it in terms of values, rites, codes and models of meaning common to individuals. Corporate culture would be "a set of basic assumptions invented, discovered or developed by a group seeking to deal with problems of external adaptation or internal integration that have been widely verified to be considered valid and passed on to new members as the correct ways of thinking and acting in the face of problems".
If we go back to the famous organizational culture model introduced by Schein in the 80s, we can see that a company is organized around three main axes: artifacts, adopted values and assumptions.
Artifacts are the visible elements that even an outsider could see. This includes the type of desk, dress code, mantras, etc.
Espoused values are naturally those put forward by the company as well as standards. These values obviously have an effect on how employees interact with each other and how they represent the organization.
Shared basic assumptions are the immutable spearheads of a company, so ingrained that they are hardly noticeable anymore. They are the essence of culture and federate artifacts and values.
To go further about corporate culture and Schein's model, here is an article from the Harvard Business Review: How to tell if your company has a creative culture.
Knowing how to identify it
Often, one culture differs from another because each company has its own set of values. They establish these values in line with their aspirations and by taking into account their history and the resulting anchoring. However, it is agreed that there are four main families of corporate culture: clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market. These typologies differ from each other in relation to the criteria we have mentioned above.
A clan-type culture will mainly revolve around values such as team spirit, cohesion or a sense of family. The type of leadership is similar to the role of mentor, facilitator. Secondly, an "adhocracy" culture offers values such as entrepreneurship, creativity and adaptability, which are elements that can be found in startups, for example. Risk-taking and innovation are encouraged.
On the other hand, hierarchical culture is based on values of rules, uniformity and order. It is a rather administrative leadership that operates and the rules and procedures have an important place. For example, this culture is found in public administrations. Finally, the market-type culture promotes competitiveness and performance. The leader has the figure of a charismatic director. Production and results are at the center of the relational bases of this structure.
Pay attention, aim for fulfillment
In short, the boundaries of these forms of culture remain porous and the same company can borrow certain traits from several of them. Nevertheless, we know that it is important to take an interest in it in order to acquire the necessary tools to differentiate one culture from another. We strongly advise you to pay attention to all these aspects during your next job search, the culture of a company is definitely no longer an aspect to be neglected to flourish at work.
At Meet My Job, we invite you to learn much more about the corporate culture of our partners, here.