Correlation between Corporate Culture and Corporate Strategy

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7, University of applied sciences, Cologne, course: Strategic Corporate Management, language: English, abstract: The character of a company's culture or work climate is gaining in importance. Culture is a product of the core values and business principles that executives espouse, the standards of what is ethically acceptable and what is not, the work practices and behaviours that define "e;how we do things around here"e;, its approach to people management and style of operating, the "e;chemistry"e; and the "e;personality"e; that permeates its work environment, and the stories that get told over and over to illustrate and reinforce the company's values, business principles, and traditions. A company s culture is important because it influences the organization s actions and approaches to conduct the business in a very real sense, the culture is the company s operating system or organizational DNA. All in all, culture as a concept is difficult to define and differs from company to company. The crafting of a strategy represents a managerial commitment to pursue a particular set of actions in growing the business, attracting and pleasing customers, competing successfully, conducting operations, and improving the company s financial and market performance. Even companies with same strategic and business concepts and comparable success differ in their approaches regarding the corporate culture. What becomes clear is that there is a correlation between culture and strategy. Hence the consistency between strategy and culture is a long-term competitive advantage and a key to corporate success. To counteract preventive a possible misfit between the corporate culture and the strategy, consideration of corporate culture as part of the concept to strategy implementation is essential.