The New Corporate Cultures

"Cultures change only when they need to and are damned well ready to change. They change when their collective intelligence recognizes that the world has changed and that the culture better adapt in order for the business to survive."

"Business without committed people is doomed to mediocrity and ultimately failure. This is the legacy shareholder value thinking and the short-termism it spawned have left for future generations."

"Downsizing, particularly on a large scale and repeated again and again, ruins the culture of an organization by threatening or destroying core cultural elements."

"Surprisingly, some employees seem to prefer contract status because of the independence it provides. Workers without . . . in-demand skills are not so lucky. They tend to be the big losers in the outsourcing game."

"Many would argue that downsizing?forcibly removing people from their jobs and livelihood?is the single most _culturally_ destructive management trend since the late 1970s. We beg to differ: Outsourcing is. "

"Cultural collisions, almost without exception, result in cultural isolation for the surviving employees from the acquired firm."

"Managers contemplating mergers often trumpet the synergies to be achieved and the new skills and expertise being acquired. Some of these potential synergies and skills are cultural, a factor not always given much thought."

"Computers can be used to enhance the skills of workers and broaden their impact on a wider field of corporate endeavor. But they can also be used to trap workers in dead-end jobs"

"The Japanese team member smiles in a friendly but noncommittal fashion. His gesture is taken as acquiescence by the ever optimistic American. It is seen as disagreement by the ever pessimistic German."

"The balanced image of a corporation as servant of many constituencies has shifted to a single focus on shareholders. The shift has undermined an implicit, long-standing belief in the mutuality of interest between employer and employee."

"Once you have an idea about the cultural lay of the land in your company, you need to exercise some personal leadership to begin the process of building into the company the kind of culture you want."

"A key challenge for modern managers is finding a way to unite fragmented subsultures into a coherent whole around a common purpose. Only by recapturing collective coherence and meaning can they bring about more robust future performance."

"In companies intent on revitalizing a fragmentized culture, rediscovering celebrations is a significant step in the recovery process."

"Achieving performance gains is not an automatic by-product of building a cohesive and confident culture. It also takes purposeful management."

"The steps we outline may help, but they are incidental to the larger challenge: returning meaningful work to people. Only then will a sense of enabling purpose return."