CORPORATE CULTURE AND VALUES

Phuoc D. Nguyen

All best-known multi-national companies in the world had their starting point were micro-finance companies, small businesses, mid-size companies, or family businesses. All authorities were held by the owner and all of the staff who directly reported to the owner. Therefore, all decisions were made by the owner too. The culture and values in the founding stage were the owner’s personal and family culture and values. Additionally, many businesses were established by a group of people with their own culture and values which were ‘united personal cultures and values’ which were mixed between founding members’ cultures and values. These personal and family cultures, and values that owners and founding members forced their staff to follow them. As a result, culture and values were not corporate culture because they did not include cultural norms, elements of corporate culture, and organizational values. Schein (2010) indicates “The emphasis in this early stage is on differentiating the organization from the environment and from other organizations; the organization makes its culture explicit integrates it as much as possible, and teaches it firmly to newcomers” (p. 274).

In the midlife stage, when companies grow steadily and become a public company; this stage has a ‘tug-a-war’ to shift from the owner’s culture and values to real corporate culture and values. The owner still wants to influence and cling their personal and family culture, and values to non-family members in the succession process. The new CEO and non-family members of the board should review the founding stage’s culture and values to hold appropriate old culture and values and complement appropriate new culture and values to integrate them and establish the set of integrated corporate culture and values including culture norms and corporate values based on national culture (geography areas where company operate in) problems which were solved to serve stakeholders, shareholders, and staff’s benefits. The biggest pressure to change corporate culture and values is from shareholders and stakeholders. Schein (2010) proposes “The preparation for succession is psychologically difficult, both for the founder and for potential successors because entrepreneurs typically like to maintain high levels of control” (p. 281).

Apply Chatterjee and Kaipa’s (2000) Wisdom Model of Leadership in the midlife stage to implement culture change which requires the owner, new CEO, non-family members of the board, and management team who have the right knowledge, the right way to transform, right way to organize, and right action. However, these people who have ‘right thinking’ to drive the four dimensions of this model aim to lead culture change successfully. Chatterjee (2006) presents “According to the classical Indian tradition, the dimensional values of life are: knowledge (jnan), action (karma), integration (bhakti) and transformation (dharma)” (p. 159).