AM Lecture 5

Management > Asian Management > Chaebol > Lee's management challenges > Lee explained > Corporate behaviour > Effects of law reforms > Reality > Social Pact >HRM abroad > Corporate culture

Corporate culture

Korean companies are very "corporate culture" orientated and this is used as a basis for growth. However, it can be a source of problems when the environment changes rapidly, such as after 1997.

Park (2002) considered failures in changing corporate culture. He found an inappropriate understanding of the concept of organisational culture and a lack of professional skills among campaign managers. A hastiness in culture change meant a failure to gain employees' interest.

There was thus shown to be a lack of linkage between strategy and culture change efforts and lack of linkage between culture change efforts and other business innovation activities.

Development of corporate culture

Corporate culture can be developed in the following manner:

• Process of systematic culture management
• Crafting of a cultural vision
• Education of the corporate ideology (indoctrination)
• Development of corporate emblems (symbolism)
• Modification of behaviour and systems (implementation)

Cho and Yoon (2002) studied the internal forces of culture at work. They saw that Korea is a collectivist culture and the corporate culture is based on "dynamic collectivism" - a tension between in-groups and out-groups.

The three dimensions of collective dynamism include:

1. In-group harmony
2. Optimistic progressivism
3. Hierarchical principle (from Confucian five codes)

This can serve as a problem with corporate culture change, as the process needs to be all inclusive and affect everyone, so that they feel part of a group. In addition, the creation of subsets suggests that in-group harmony is superficial, and that corporate culture change is a mechanism for divisiveness, rather than for unity. This means that it fails its main objective.

Post 1997