Corporate Culture and International Business..

1. Managing across cultures and contexts
MN20598
René Ceipek
SESSION 7

2. Wrap up
• So far we have identified ...
• ... that national culture matters in IB and that they can be
assessed
• ... that differences in national culture mainly affect individuals,
teams, and organizations
• ... that there are recent trends that create something called
supranational culture
• All this is has to be put in context with a corporation’s culture,
which we will look at today!
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3. Questions
Do you have any question regarding last week?
Do you have any questions regarding the content discussed last
week?
Let’s check our Twitter-wall
https://twitter.com/hashtag/culturebath?src=hash
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4. Where are we?
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5. IMPORTANT
• Our Google guest speaker LISA BAUMANN will join us on
next Monday
• So make sure you are there to network, secure your next
internship or whatever you feel could be important to you now
Monday 16.04.2018
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6. Assignments
• Feedback/grades for assignment A will be provided this week
through MOODLE
• Late submissions will not be graded = 0 points (e.g. all
submissions that were not uploaded ontime on MOODLE)
• Course work surgery for assignment B on Monday 23.04 in
class
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7. Content session 7
1. Introduction
2. What is corporate culture and why does it matter?
3. National and corporate culture
4. How to manage corporate culture in MNEs
BREAK
5. Group-work on Google corporate culture video
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8. Today’s focus
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Any form of
supranational
culture
National
culture A
National
culture B
Corporate
culture
Subculture
A
Subculture
B

9. What is corporate culture?
• “The way we do things here...”
• “Our basic values...”
• “The rites and rituals of a company...”
• However, this might be not enough and incomplete
• Therefore, consider corporate culture on levels! (Schein,
2009)
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10. What is corporate culture?
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Schein, 2009
What you hear, see and
feel at the corporation
The answers to questions
you ask members of the
organization
The underlying, historically
derived take for granted
formula for success

11. What is corporate culture?
• A definition:
Culture is a pattern of shared tacit assumptions that was
learned by a group as it solved its problems of external
adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well
enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to
new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel
in relation to those problems. (Schein, 2009)
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12. What is corporate culture?
• Three implications:
Culture is deep: It is hard to manipulate and deeply rooted.
Culture is broad: Beliefs and assumptions grounded in culture
influence your daily life and inform many decisions.
Culture is stable: Members of groups hold on to culture, as it
makes life predictable and meaningful.
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13. Why is corporate culture important?
• Culture matters because it is a powerful tacit, and often
unconscious set of forces that determine both our individual and
collective behaviour, ways of perceiving, thought patterns, and
values. (Schein, 2009)
• Organizational culture determines strategy, goals, and modes of
operating. (Schein, 2009)
• Corporate culture plays an important role in leadership
• Emergence of subcultures
• Product lines and divisions
• Geography
• Upper echelons
• Mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures etc.15/04/2018 René Ceipek - University of Bath 13

14. Elements of corporate culture
• Common languages and concepts
• Defining group membership: uniforms, badges, parking slots,
etc.
• If you are in, you are told the “real” stories and secrets
• Relationships, Rank and Authority: First or second names?
Formal, less formal? Share your personal life or not?
• Rewards and Status: Is it money or titles or number of
subordinates?
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15. Corporate culture – When?
• Analysing and understanding corporate culture is particular
relevant when:
• Strategic reorientation
• M&As, joint ventures, alliances
• WHERE more than one homogenous culture is involved!
• Cultural change (within the organization and in the
environment)
• How do you assess: Surveys (?!), interviews, focus groups
etc.15/04/2018 René Ceipek - University of Bath 15

16. Corporate culture – Change
• Corporate culture changes when there is disconfirmation
• Basic beliefs and assumptions don’t fit to any given situation (legal,
political, technological etc. threat)
• Survival anxiety arises
• Drivers of change versus forces that restrain
• Often scandals or disasters are the major drivers for change
• Very often also strategic changes (M&A, joint venture)
• New leaders and members on the TMT
• Education and training leading to discovery of disconfirmation
• Anxiety to survive needs to be smaller than anxiety to learn for
cultural change
• What levels change? Corporation, division, unit, group?
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17. Corporate culture – Time
• Characteristics of corporate culture change over time and
growth phases
• Start-up and early growth:
• Culture mainly formed by founder and early stage employees (“Walk
the talk”)
• Becomes stronger in case of success
• Right employees needed to share these basic believes, assumptions,
values
• Culture is normally very strong, as founders are present and it helps
people to navigate in new hostile environment
• Hence, no or hardly any change at this stage
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18. Corporate culture – Time
• However, when firms grow there is adaptation:
• Can be small and incremental relative to arising challenges for the
firm and happen naturally
• Guided evolution through insights and leadership
• People management  Get new people in who could shift the cultural
core
• Managing subcultures, as firms grow into divisions
• Problems arise, when firms grow too big for informal
exchange and only formal processes remain
• Also, when there is succession (second, third etc. generation
leaders)15/04/2018 René Ceipek - University of Bath 18

19. National and corporate culture
• Corporate culture is embedded in national culture
• Thus, individual national culture background is reflected in
organizational culture through founder, members, leaders etc.
• Applying typical dimensions of national culture analysis to
corporations embedded in a certain national culture revealed
great overlaps between corporate and national culture
• Individualism vs. Collectivism
• Feminism vs. Masculinity
• etc. etc.
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20. Clash of cultures
• Apart from its embeddedness in national culture, other factors
can add complexity:
• Sub-cultures within the existing company
• Sub-cultures through the integration of an acquired company
• Joint ventures require the integration of two corporate cultures
• Highest degree of complexity if M&A happens within an international
context and both corporate and national culture collides
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21. The subsidiary dilemma
• An international branch of a MNE located in a different country
than the HQ
• Dependent on the relationship between subsidiary and HQ,
different degrees of freedom arise for the subsidiary
• Nevertheless, the subsidiary constantly has to balance:
• Conformity with the local cultural and institutional environment
• Consistency with the central strategy and corporate culture
developed by HQ
• Subcultures may arise, specifically suited to the functional role
of the subsidiary in the MNE (R&D, sales, etc.) and its
embeddedness in national culture (HQ USA vs. subs in India)
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22. Managing the complexity
• Faced with an extraordinary difficult situation of having to
integrate corporate cultures across national cultures, the
firm could:
• Select the right people (remember expats, international managers and
their skills) to manage such processes (e.g. with cultural intelligence)
• Provide the right training and education for employees etc. (also
language)
• Provide the right leadership (openness, communication etc.)
• Process reviews
• Formal assessment processes comparing artefacts etc. (more
visual parts of corporate culture)
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23. Managing the complexity
• Communication and dialogue in order to...
• ... establish a shared understanding of terminology
• ... get familiar with the processes of the other firm
• ... discover the cultural foundations that drive behaviour
• ... discover potential synergies
• ... discover how cultural differences can be exploited (creativity,
product development etc.)
• ... facilitate the integration process overall
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24. Mini-Task
• Go to Twitter and Tweet one key learning from this morning
using the following tags:
#culture #culturebath @BathSofM
• 5 minutes time!
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25. Break
• 10 minutes
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26. Group case work
1. Get together in groups of 5-6 people
2. Discuss the corporate culture of GOOGLE based on the
video provided on MOODLE
3. Create a short presentation (max. 2 min) with max 5 bullet
points on one of the whiteboards explaining the cornerstones
of GOOGLE corporate culture
4. Random selection of groups to present their findings (one or
two representatives)
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27. Quizizz
• Our third in-class live quiz is about to start
1. Enter the following URL on one of your devices (Laptop,
Tablet, Smartphone etc.): https://quizizz.com/join/
2. Enter the shown 6-digit code on the landing page
3. Enter your name
4. Wait until the game is started
5. The quicker you answer questions, the more points you will
receive
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28. End of today’s session
Thank you for your attention!
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29. References
All content related to corporate culture relates to:
Schein, E. (2009). The culture survival guide. San Francisco,
California: Jossey-Bass.
Life inside Google:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LyMw3w8prM
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