STRATEGY SUPPORTIVE CULTURE 2 What is Culture? 2 Strong versus Weak Culture 4 Strong Culture 4 Weak Culture 4 Strategy Supportive Techniques 5 MARKS AND SPENCER 7 Recruitment 9 Training and Appraisal 10 Profit Sharing Scheme 11 Employee Reward Structure 12 Management Change and Restructure 12 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 13 REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 17 APPENDICES 18 Strategy Supportive Culture What is Culture? Every company has its own unique culture. Culture is ?how things are done? which is defined by the values, attitudes, behaviours and stories within the company. As one manager said: ?Culture is something which makes members of an organisation behave more like each other than non-members!? Microsoft is a good illustration of what could be considered a culture of high performance. This perceived culture comes primarily from stories of long hours and programmers overcoming coding problems. But apart from stories, culture is built around a number of different facets including official policies and procedures, such as training and recruitment, relationships with stakeholders and the attitudes and behaviours of supervisory staff.
English: Logo of Marks & Spencer
English: Marks and Spencer in Wetherby
English: Marks and Spencer store, Birmingham High ...Culture can also be derived from the founder, as the core company was built on the principles of this individual. Culture from these grounds take root and then persists, as new employees are encouraged to follow professed practices.
The burning question in strategic management is ?Can culture help to promote better strategy execution?? and in theory the answer is YES. If the values and beliefs etc. of the culture fit with the proposed strategy it is therefore believable to say that this will aid the implementation process. For example if a culture was built around the principle of listening to the customer and people are encouraged to take pride in their work, this could potentially help with the implementation of a superior customer service strategy. Can culture help...