Corporate culture: an investigation into the operationalisation of the concept and into divergences between management and staff

摘要

Studies on corporate culture are mostly limited to samples drawn from management,udand the integrative view of corporate culture as something unique within an organisationudstill dominates in the literature. Such a unitary stance bears the risk that culturaluddivergences in corporations remain undetected, thereby limiting the value of research onudcorporate culture. A further aspect found in the literature is the complexity and varietyudascribed to corporate culture, which exacerbates practical implementation of theudconcept. The operationalisation of the cultural concept is still a prevalent problem notudyet completely resolved. This research addresses these two concerns.udThe researcher conducted this research at Post CH Ltd. The study incorporated theuddesign and implementation of a tailored survey, based on cultural dimensions from theudliterature, items from Swiss Post’s employee survey, and data from semi-structuredudqualitative interviews with members of top management. The survey involvedudemployees of Post CH Ltd from all hierarchical levels, selected by proportionateudstratified random sampling. The two thirds of the questionnaire recipients whoudresponded could also comment on an optional open question. The researcher thenudanalysed the qualitative and quantitative data in order to discover the degree ofudalignment on corporate culture. Finally, recommendations were elaborated on how toudmitigate the explored divergences between management and employees.udThis research provides contributions in two distinct areas: first, it demonstrates that the perception of a unitary corporate culture is not always tenable. The researcher found distinctive and statistically significant divergences in corporate culture, as staff in line management positions are considerably more positive in their perception of corporate culture compared to employees without management responsibilities. Using content analysis, the researcher further discovered divergences in the perception of corporate culture between top management and employees. Second, it demonstrated the successful operationalisation of corporate culture research into practical application, by offering a thorough, concrete, specific, and tailored approach, contributing to a more practitioner friendly usage of the concept of corporate culture. The methods used here can be applied to other organisations in a similar way.udKeywords: Corporate culture; organisational culture; cultural divergences; cultural fit; organisational change; organisational performance; Swiss Post; Post CH Ltd.