Business Management

SHORT QUESTION (ESSAY / CASE STUDY / EXERCISE)

Read the extract below and answer the questions that follow:-

Impact of Culture on Business – Deloitte Insights

The importance of culture is readily apparent when things go wrong. When two large

companies merged last year, for example, it became clear that one company had a culture of

“low cost” while the other had a culture of “quality service.” Employees received mixed signals

for months until the new management team took the time to carefully diagnose and redefine

many business processes throughout the company. Given the importance of culture and the

consequences of cultural issues, many companies are proactively defining culture and issuing

culture “manifestos.” The Netflix culture presentation, often used as an example, has been

downloaded more than 12 million times since 2009. The presentation clearly describes a

culture that combines high expectations with an engaging employee experience: Generous

corporate perks such as unlimited vacation, flexible work schedules, and limited supervision

balance a strong focus on results with freedom and appreciation for the expected

achievement. The financial services industry, still restoring its brand after the 2008 financial

crisis, is sharply focused on culture. One organization is using a variety of initiatives to help

employees understand “how the bank does business,” including offering speaker series on

topics such as compensation packages, customer satisfaction, and maintaining regulatory

standards. Citigroup has an entire committee focused on ethics and culture and has

implemented a series of web-based videos detailing real workplace ethical dilemmas. Bank of

MODULE GLOBAL BUSINESS AND STRATEGY

TOTAL MARKS 20 MARKS

America is focusing its corporate culture transformation on encouraging employees to report

and escalate issues or concerns, as well as incorporating a risk “boot camp” into their current

training. Wells Fargo is increasing its efforts to gather employee survey feedback to

understand current trends and potential areas of weakness in its culture. A new industry of

culture assessment tools has emerged, enabling companies to diagnose their culture using a

variety of well-established models. Yet despite the prevalence of these tools, fewer than 12

percent of companies believe they truly understand their culture. That’s where HR can help.

As businesses try to understand and improve their culture, HR’s role is to improve the ability

to curate and shape culture actively. An organization’s capabilities to understand and pull the

levers of culture change can be refined and strengthened. HR has a natural role to play in

both efforts. As operations become more distributed and move to a structure of “networks of

teams,” culture serves to bind people together and helps people communicate and collaborate.

When managed well, culture can drive execution and ensure business consistency around the

world. HR has an opportunity to assume the role of champion, monitor, and communicator of

culture across, and even outside, the organization. Once culture is clearly described, it defines

who the company hires, who gets promoted, and what behaviours will be rewarded with

compensation or promotion. Nordstrom has formed a People Lab Science Team in an effort

to define and curate a culture that will attract top talent and enable the retailer to compete with

tech companies such as Tableau and Microsoft. The team takes a multidisciplinary approach

to designing programs to define and reinforce Nordstrom’s culture. Starbucks analyzed

thousands of social media entries to gain an objective view of its culture through the eyes of

its employees and take specific actions to reinforce its cultural strengths and address cultural

weaknesses. Securitas Belgium has defined the behaviors associated with its vision for

culture, performed an analysis of its current state, and developed a detailed, measurable

change plan for 150 of its managers. Software giant SAS was recently rated the best place to

work by the Great Place to Work Institute. It is also highly successful, with 37 consecutive

years of record earnings (it earned $2.8 billion in 2012). SAS has identified trust as a critical

cultural attribute and regularly surveys its employees on elements of trust: communication,

respect, transparency, and being treated as a human being. Once an organization develops

a clear understanding of its culture and decides on a direction for cultural change, it is critical

to move rapidly from analysis to action. Moving from talking to doing is the only way to build

momentum. For companies pondering a cultural transformation, the time to start is now—

because many companies are already way ahead.

(Source:https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2016/impact-

of-culture-on-business-strategy.html// date of accession 4th Aug 2019)

Question 1) How do you see the cultural transformation for companies in South Africa?

Comment. (6 Marks)

Question 2) Discuss the role of Religion and Education in modern business transformation

with appropriate examples. (14 Marks)

Assignment Guidelines

 Your assignment should include a Table of Contents page. See www.aded.co.za/698

for an example.

 Text: Font Arial or Times New Roman (12); Spacing 1.5 lines.

 All text must be justified at each margin.

 The length of your answers to each question should be in line with the mark allocation.

As a rough guide - your answer should not exceed 2 pages for a 10 mark question. All

answers should be appropriately structured.

 Your answers must also include any relevant theories, charts, tables and/or exhibits

necessary to support your analysis and recommendations. All external sources used

should be referenced.

 Ensure that your content in the assignment are not merely reproduced from other

sources without some rephrasing of the text together with original critical thoughts,

comments and views.