Company, culture, globalisation. Where will it lead?
Corporate culture changes as the corporation evolves. This would seem an obvious statement, yet in fact the opposite is true. The change in the culture of a company is influenced by its evolution yet, in turn, it can also affect, even heavily, the dynamics whereby decisions are taken, how the markets are viewed, the methods of staff management and how customers and their satisfaction are seen. All this then becomes complicated when the company in question is multinational or when it changes from local to global.
What happens then?
Some of the answers come from Maria S. Plakhotnik, associate professor at Florida International University, who covers, succinctly and clearly, the most significant literature on the subject and bases her reasoning on an observation of the way in which many companies, having gone global, change their markets, structure, processes, approaches and culture, just as other global firms attempt to build a new type of organisational culture based on values and beliefs which are comprehensive and winning for the employees, aside from their native country, race or professional experience. In order to identify better the type of company examined under the microscope Plakhotnik coins the idea of geocentric companies, i.e. those firms which transcend cultural differences in order to build set-ups that are new in human and organisational terms. More particularly the research takes into consideration the relations and relationships built between those working in the company and the culture which the same, globalised, company tends to create internally.
On closer inspection this is an interesting exercise at a time when increasingly in companies people from widely differing countries and cultural areas find themselves working side by side.
That of Maria Plakhotnik is therefore an interesting journey into a new way of understanding corporate culture, increasingly based on the global yet which also has to reckon with local forces and feelings.
Geocentric Corporate Organizational Culture and Employee National Identity
Maria S. Plakhotnik
in Proceedings of the Seventh Annual College of Education Research Conference: Urban and International Education Section (pp. 117-122). Miami: Florida International University, USA.
Corporate culture changes as the corporation evolves. This would seem an obvious statement, yet in fact the opposite is true. The change in the culture of a company is influenced by its evolution yet, in turn, it can also affect, even heavily, the dynamics whereby decisions are taken, how the markets are viewed, the methods of staff management and how customers and their satisfaction are seen. All this then becomes complicated when the company in question is multinational or when it changes from local to global.
What happens then?
Some of the answers come from Maria S. Plakhotnik, associate professor at Florida International University, who covers, succinctly and clearly, the most significant literature on the subject and bases her reasoning on an observation of the way in which many companies, having gone global, change their markets, structure, processes, approaches and culture, just as other global firms attempt to build a new type of organisational culture based on values and beliefs which are comprehensive and winning for the employees, aside from their native country, race or professional experience. In order to identify better the type of company examined under the microscope Plakhotnik coins the idea of geocentric companies, i.e. those firms which transcend cultural differences in order to build set-ups that are new in human and organisational terms. More particularly the research takes into consideration the relations and relationships built between those working in the company and the culture which the same, globalised, company tends to create internally.
On closer inspection this is an interesting exercise at a time when increasingly in companies people from widely differing countries and cultural areas find themselves working side by side.
That of Maria Plakhotnik is therefore an interesting journey into a new way of understanding corporate culture, increasingly based on the global yet which also has to reckon with local forces and feelings.
Geocentric Corporate Organizational Culture and Employee National Identity
Maria S. Plakhotnik
in Proceedings of the Seventh Annual College of Education Research Conference: Urban and International Education Section (pp. 117-122). Miami: Florida International University, USA.