Colgate-Palmolive (Colgate), AOL Time Warner (AOL) and Bank of America's (BOA) are the three prominent corporations that have been benchmarked for their strategic maneuvering through issues regarding their organizational culture, risk management and project management strategies. The outcome of each benchmarked corporations' response has provided instrumental strategic solutions to combat Harrison Keyes (HK) current issues and facilitate its successful transformation from publishing printed materials to publishing electronic books.
Organizational Culture ConceptAs a key business element the culture of the workplace environment "provides a sense of identity for it membersâ¦culture includes the behavioral norms, customs, shared values, and the "rules of the game" for getting along and getting ahead within the organization. It is important for project managers to be "culture sensitive" so that they can develop strategies and responses that are likely to be understood and accepted as well as avoid violating key norms that would jeopardize their effectiveness within the organization" (Gray& Lawson, 2005, p.80).
1922 magazine advertisement for Palmolive Soap.
English: Palmolive Soap magazine ad from 1915
Deutsch: Colgate Uhr Jersey CityHarrison Keyes (HK) Organizational Culture IssueHK operates under the mantra "revenues at any cost", tolerating dysfunctional workplace conflict. HK has no clear corporate culture policy or procedures, diversity awareness training, or best practice strategies for the implementation and fulfillment of the new international e-publishing initiative. As a result, the stakeholders' values, goals, objectives, and actions are misaligned with those of the organizations and there are deficiencies in accountability and consensus among the internal departments. These countercultures have diluted HKs' work team efficiency leading to poor unit integration, team emphasis, and cohesiveness. This is amplified by unrealistic employee performance expectations. HK demonstrates an unsupportive and ineffective organizational culture. However, the correspondence between the CEO Meg McGill and her leadership team has not addressed the need to revamp the organizational culture. HK must provide a strategic direction to gain employees buy-in and commitment to delivering shared...