CORPORATE CULTURE

Corporate Culture

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Title of the Article

A corporate culture is the collection of values, principles and practices that are shared by the employees of a company. Although businesses also promote an adaptive or flexible culture within their working environment exhibit a greater degree of resilience to evolving market trends and changing preferences, the primary emphasis of a corporate culture is on striking the right balance between the requirements of the business and the needs of the workforce (Stanford, 2011, p. 29). A corporate culture is also flexible in terms of working hours, dress code, power distance and staff turnover.

In terms of working hours, a corporate culture offers greater flexibility to employees in how they balance work and private life (Ronen, 1981, p. 204). For instance, it is a widely acknowledged fact that working students find it increasingly difficult to give time to their studies while taking up a job to finance it. And in the event that their class timings clash with office timings, it only adds to their woes. In such instances, most businesses that do not have a corporate culture are highly unforgiving and inflexible so that they demand that the employees unconditionally and religiously follow their working hours.

Same is the case for female employees who have additional domestic responsibilities apart from the ones that they take up in their offices. Imagine a business whose policies on working hours are so stringent that it simply refuses to grant flexible working timings to a mother who genuinely needs it to look after her sick son at home. In such cases, female employees most commonly resign from the organization as they have no other choice. Therefore, in the absence of a corporate culture, businesses may ask their employees to compromise on their studies or even an ailing relative without considering the dire effects it may have on their personal lives (Krause-Jensen, 2010, p. 248).

A corporate culture also offers a greater degree of flexibility in terms of the dress code that employees can follow at the workplace. There are many businesses that, even today, adopt stringent and unforgiving policies on the dress code to be followed in the workplace (Rubenstein, 2000, p. 9;Reece, 2012, p. 127). This meant that the employees were only allowed to wear specific type of clothing at work which was deemed formal by the organization. Similarly, female workers were also encouraged to conform to a set ...