Harvard Business Review Article of the Month
(December 1999)
What Holds the Modern Company Together?
Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones
The organizational world is awash with talk of corporate culture - and for good reason. Culture has become a powerful way to hold a company together against the recent tidal wave of pressures for disintegration, such as decentralization and downsizing. But what is culture? Perhaps more important, is there one right culture for every organization? And if the answer is no, how can a manager change an organization's culture?
Addressing those three questions, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones begin the article with the assertion that culture is community. Moreover, they contend, because business communities are no different from communities outside the commercial arena - such as families, schools, clubs, and villages - they can (and should) be viewed through the same lens that has illuminated the study of human organizations for nearly 150 years.
That is the lens of sociology, which divides community into two types of human relations: sociability, a measure of friendliness among members of a community, and solidarity, a measure of a community's ability to pursue shared objectives. Plotting these two dimensions against each other results in four types of business community: networked, mercenary, fragmented, and communal. None of these cultures is "the best," the authors say. In fact, each is appropriate for different business environments. In other words, managers need not advocate one cultural type over another. Instead, they must know how to assess their own culture and whether it fits the competitive situation. Only then can they consider the delicate techniques for transforming it.
Reprint 96605
Harvard Business Review Article. November 1996.
