Reflecting the swing away from "rational," analytical approaches to
management, and toward humanistic modes of approach, Harvard
education professor Deal and management consultant Kennedy
hypothesize that the most successful American companies - from IBM
and Procter & Gamble to Mary Leu Cosmetics - generate a strong
internal culture that gives employees and management a distinct
identity, mutual values and goals, and so on, all reinforced by
"rituals" and "heroes." ("Managers like Harold Geneen are captured
by an ethic of survival. . . . Heroes, by contrast, are driven by
an ethic of creation.") Four major cultural "tribes" are
identified: the tough-guy, or macho (individualists who take high
risks, with quick feedback, like those in the entertainment or
publishing business); the work hard/play hard types (action is the
byword, and risks are minimal); the bet-your-company cultures (high
stakes, slow feedback, like the oil industries); and the "process"
cultures (government bureaucracies, banks, etc.) - where the
emphasis is on how things are done, because very little is actually
risked and feedback is hard to come by. A company's cultural style
can be diagnosed, the authors aver, through such tools as slogans
(IBM's slogan pertains to service, and that places it squarely in
the work hard/play hard culture, where values center on customers
and their needs.) In the future, they foresee "atomized"
(decentralized) business organization, where "culture" will be an
even stronger determinant of success. (Some signs: franchising,
divestiture, spin-offs.) Deal and Kennedy are skilled at charting
the course of cultural development within a variety of corporate
climes, and their documentation from their personal consultancies
is impressive The public record also suggests that there's a good
deal to what they say - which, in any case, makes fascinating,
provocative reading. (Kirkus Reviews)
Business experts everywhere have been finding that corporations run
not only on numbers, but on culture. In this revised and updated
2000 edition of "Corporate Cultures," organization consultants
Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy probe the conference rooms and
corridors of corporate America to discover the key to business
excellence. They find that the health of the bottom line is not
ultimately guaranteed by attention to the rational aspects of
managing-financial planning, personnel policies, cost controls, and
the like. What's more important to long-term prosperity is the
company's culture-the inner values, rites, rituals, and heroes-that
strongly influence its success, from top management to the
secretarial pool.For junior and senior managers alike, Deal and
Kennedy offer explicit guidelines for diagnosing the state of one's
own corporate culture and for using the power of culture to wield
significant influence on how business gets done.
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