When people set up an organisation they will typically borrow from models
or ideals that are familiar to them. The organisation, as we explored in Chap-
ter 2, is a subjective construct and its employees will give meaning to their
environment based on their own particular cultural programming. The
organisation is like something else they have experienced. It may be deemed
to resemble a family, or an impersonal system designed to achieve targets. It
may be likened to a vessel which is travelling somewhere, or a missile hom-
ing in on customers and strategic objectives. Cultural preferences operating
across the dimensions described in the previous chapters influence the mod-
els people give to organisations and the meanings they attribute to them.
This chapter explores four types of corporate culture and shows how differ-
ences between national cultures help determine the type of corporate culture
“chosen”. Employees have a shared perception of the organisation, and what
they believe has real consequences for the corporate culture that develops.
Different corporate cultures
Organisational culture is shaped not only by technologies and markets, but
by the cultural preferences of leaders and employees. Some international
companies have European, Asian, American or Middle Eastern subsidiaries
which would be unrecognisable as the same company save for their logo
and reporting procedures. Often these are fundamentally different in the
logic of their structure and the meanings they bring to shared activity.
Three aspects of organisational structure are especially important in
determining corporate culture.
1. The general relationship between employees and their organisation.
2. The vertical or hierarchical system of authority defining superiors and
subordinates.
3. The general views of employees about the organisation’s destiny, pur-
pose and goals and their places in this.
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158
Thus far we have distinguished cultures along single dimensions;
universalism-particularism, for example, and individualism-communi-
tarianism. In looking at organisations we need to think in two dimensions,
generating four quadrants. The dimensions we use to distinguish different
corporate cultures are equality-hierarchy and orientation to the per-
son-orientation to the task.
This enables us to define four types of corporate culture, which vary
considerably in how they think and learn, how they change and how they
motivate, reward and resolve conflicts. This is a valuable way to analyse
organisations, but it does have the risk of caricaturisation. We tend to
believe or wish that all foreigners will fit the stereotypes we have of them.
Hence in our very recognition of “types” there is a temptation to oversim-
plify what is really quite complex.
The four types can be described as follows.
1 The family
2 The Eiffel Tower
3 The guided missile
4 The incubator
These four metaphors illustrate the relationship of employees to their
notion of the organisation. Figure 11.1 summarises the images these
organisations project.
Each of these types of corporate culture are “ideal types”. In practice
the types are mixed or overlaid with one culture dominating. This separa-
tion, though, is useful for exploring the basis of each type in terms of how
employees learn, change, resolve conflicts, reward, motivate and so on.
Why, for example, do norms and procedures which seem to work so well in
one culture lose their effectiveness in another?
The family culture
I use the metaphor of family for the culture which is at the same time per-
sonal, with close face-to-face relationships, but also hierarchical, in the
sense that the “father” of a family has experience and authority greatly
exceeding those of his “children”, especially where these are young. The
result is a power-oriented corporate culture in which the leader is
regarded as a caring father who knows better than his subordinates what
should be done and what is good for them. Rather than being threatening,
this type of power is essentially intimate and (hopefully) benign. The work
of the corporation in this type of culture is usually carried forward in an
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159
Figure 11.1 Corporate images
atmosphere that in many respects mimics the home.
The Japanese recreate within the corporation aspects of the traditional
family. The major business virtue is amae, a kind of love between persons of
differing rank, with indulgence shown to the younger and respect recipro-
cated to the elder. The idea is always to do more than a contract or agree-
ment obliges you to. The idealised relationship is sempai-kokai, that
between an older and younger brother. Promotion by age means that the
older person will typically be in charge. The relationship to the corpora-
tion is long-term and devoted.
A large part of the reason for working, performing well and resolving
conflict in this corporate culture is the pleasure derived from such rela-
tionships. To please your superior (or elder brother) is a reward in itself.
While this affection may or may not be visible to outsiders (the Japanese,
for example, are very restrained emotionally) it is nevertheless there,
whether subdued in a Japanese-style, or conveyed unmistakably by voice,
face and bodily gesture, Italian-style. The leader of the family-style. culture
weaves the pattern, sets the tone, models the appropriate posture for the
corporation and expects subordinates to be “on the same wavelength”,
knowing intuitively what is required; conversely, the leader may
empathise with the subordinates.
At its best the power-oriented family culture exercises power through
its members acting with one accord. Power is not necessarily over them,
although it may be. The main sanction is loss of affection and place in the
NATIONAL CULTURES AND CORPORATE CULTURE
160
family. Pressure is moral and social rather than financial or legal. Many
corporations with family-style. cultures are from nations which industri-
alised late: Greece, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Spain. Where the
transition from feudalism to industrialism was rapid, many feudal tradi-
tions remain.
Family-style. corporate cultures tend to be high context (see Chapter
7), a term which refers to the sheer amount of information and cultural
content taken for granted by members. The more in-jokes there are, the
more family stories, traditions, customs and associations, the higher the
context and the harder it is for outsiders to feel that they belong or to
know how to behave appropriately. Such cultures exclude strangers with-
out necessarily wishing to do so and communicate in codes which only
members understand.
Relationships tend to be diffuse (see Chapter 7). The “father” or “elder
brother” is influential in all situations, whether they have knowledge of
the problem or not, whether an event occurs at work, in the canteen or on
the way home, and even if someone else present is better qualified. The
general happiness and welfare of all employees is regarded as the concern
of the family-type corporation, which worries about their housing, the size
of their families and whether their wages are sufficient for them to live
well. The corporation may assist in these areas.
Power and differential status are seen as “natural”, a characteristic of
the leaders themselves and not related to the tasks they succeed or fail in
doing, any more than a parent ceases to be a parent by neglecting certain
duties. Above the power of the leader may be that of the state, the political
system, the society or God. Power is political in the sense of being broadly
ordained by authorities, rather than originating in roles to be filled or
tasks to be performed. This does not mean that those in power are
unskilled or cannot do their jobs; it means that for such an organisation to
perform. well the requisite knowledge and skills must be brought to the
power centres, thereby justifying the existing structure. Take the follow-
ing testimony by a British manager.
“In Italy I was introduced to my counterpart, the head of applications
engineering. I asked him about his organisation, his department and the
kind of work they were engaged in. Within minutes he had given me a
dozen names and his personal estimate of their political influence, their
proximity to power and their tastes, preferences and opinions. He said
almost nothing about either their knowledge, their skills or their
performance. As far as I could tell, they had no specific functions, or if
they had my informant was ignorant of them. I was amazed. There
NATIONAL CULTURES AND CORPORATE CULTURE
161
seemed to be no conception of the tasks that had to be done or their
challenge and complexity.”
It did not occur to the British manager that this “family model” is capa-
ble of processing complexity without necessarily seeing itself as a func-
tional instrument to this end. The authority in the family model is
unchallengeable in the sense that it is not seen to depend on tasks per-
formed but on status ascribed. A major issue becomes that of getting the
top people to notice, comprehend and act. If older people have more
authority, then they must be briefed thoroughly and supported loyally in
order to fulfil the status attributed to them. The culture works to justify
its own initial suppositions.
In our own research, we tested to what extent managers from different
cultures saw their leaders “as a kind of father” or to what extent they
thought the leader “got the job done”. The results are shown in Figure
11.2, where we see one of the widest ranges of national variances of
response, and a marked grouping of Asian countries towards the top of the
chart. Another question asked of managers in the process of this research
was to think of the company they work for in terms of a triangle, and to
pick the one on the diagram (Figure 11.3) which best represents it. The
steepest triangle scores five points and so on down to one.
The scores of nations where the leader is seen as a father (Figure 11.2)
correlate closely with the steepness of the triangles in Figure 11.3. The
familial cultures of Turkey, Venezuela and several Asian countries have
the steepest hierarchies; the image combines attachment to subordination
with relative permanence of employment. Nearly all of these are also to be
found in the top third of Figure 11.2.
Family cultures at their least effective drain the energies and loyalties of
subordinates to buoy up the leader, who literally floats on seas of adoration.
Leaders get their sense of power and confidence from their followers, their
charisma fuelled by credulity and by seemingly childlike faith. Yet skilful
leaders of such cultures can also catalyse and multiply energies and appeal
to the deepest feelings and aspirations of their subordinates. They avoid the
depersonalisation of management by objectives; management by subjectives
works better. They resemble the leaders of movements aiming to emanci-
pate, reform, reclaim and enlighten both their members and society, like the
American civil rights movement; such movements also are essentially fam-
ily-type structures, resocialising members in new forms of conduct.
Family cultures have difficulty with project group organisation or
matrix-type authority structures, since here authority is divided. Your
function has one boss and your project another, so how can you give undi-
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162
Figure 11.2 What makes a good manager?
Percentage of respondents opting to be left alone to get the job done
Egypt
Oman
Singapore
Venezuela
Nepal
Hong Kong
(east) Germany
Serbia
Philippines
Kuwait
Romania
Burkina Faso
Indonesia
Russia
Nigeria
China
UAE
Turkey
Hungary
Malaysia
Ireland
Czech Republic
Thailand
Bulgaria
Portugal
Japan
Spain
Sweden
Argentina
Poland
Brazil
Greece
Pakistan
Austria
Belgium
Italy
UK
South Africa
Uruguay
Mexico
Netherlands
Ethiopia
Curacac
USA
Finland
Denmark
Norway
Germany
France
Switzerland
Canada
Australia
0 20 40 60 80 100
0% 20 40 60 80 100
32
35
38
41
43
45
46
47
47
47
48
48
52
53
56
57
57
62
62
63
63
64
67
67
68
69
71
73
73
74
74
75
75
75
76
77
78
80
80
80
81
81
81
83
85
87
87
87
89
92
95
97
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163
Figure 11.3 Company triangles
vided loyalty to either? Another problem is that the claims of genuine
families may intrude. If someone is your brother or cousin they are
already related to your family back home and should therefore find it eas-
ier to relate closely to you at work. It follows that, where a role or project
culture might see nepotism as corruption and a conflict of interest, a fam-
ily culture could see it as reinforcing its current norms. A person con-
nected to your family at home and at work has one more reason not to
cheat you. Families tend to be strong where universalism is weak.
A Dutch delegation was shocked and surprised when the Brazilian
owner of a large manufacturing company introduced his relatively junior
accountant as the key co-ordinator of a $15m joint venture. The Dutch
were puzzled as to why a recently qualified accountant had been given
such weighty responsibilities, including the receipt of their own money.
The Brazilians pointed out that this young man was the best possible
choice among 1,200 employees since he was the nephew of the owner.
Who could be more trustworthy than that? Instead of complaining, the
Dutch should consider themselves lucky that he was available.
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164
The eldest child
Quite often employees in family cultures will behave like “the eldest child”
left in charge of the family while their parents are out, but relinquishing
that authority as soon as a “parent” returns. The American manager of a
plant in Miami, Florida, found this relationship with his Venezuelan sec-
ond-in-command. The plant processed and packaged PVC. The process
required high standards of quality control. The product had to be mixed in
exactly the correct proportions or it was dangerous. Irregularity in mixing
and blending had to be reported immediately it occurred and the line con-
cerned closed down at once, or unsaleable product would accumulate. A
decision to shut down was an expert one requiring detailed knowledge.
Even a delay of minutes was extremely costly. It was better on the whole to
shut down prematurely than to shut down too late.
The Venezuelan deputy knew very well when the product was satisfac-
tory and when it was not. When his manager was away from the plant
and he was in charge, he brought any line whose quality was failing to an
immediate halt. His judgment was both fast and accurate. When the man-
ager was there, however, he would look for him, report what was happen-
ing and get a decision. In the time it took to do that, considerable product
was wasted. However many times he was told to act on his own, that his
judgment was respected and that his decision would be upheld, he always
reverted to his original practice.
This was a simple case of a clash between the task orientation assumed by
the American and the family orientation of the Venezuelan. The American
had delegated the job of controlling the quality of PVC production. As he saw it
this was now his deputy’s responsibility, whether he himself was in his office
or away. It was required by the necessity of the process. But for the deputy, his
authority grew when he was left in charge and shrank the moment his “par-
ent” returned. Decisions should be taken by the most authoritative person
present. He would no more usurp the authority of his parents once they
returned home than would any child left temporarily in charge.
Some well-known research by Inzerilli and Laurent,
1
an Italian and a
French researcher, showed the much higher appeal among Italian,
French and Japanese managers of the “manager who knows everything”.
This was on the basis of posing the question: “Is it important for a man-
ager to have at hand precise answers to most of the questions raised by
subordinates?” We all know that in the complexity of modern conditions it
is becoming harder for managers to know even part of what their subordi-
nates know as a group. Yet the supposition that your manager does know
everything may require you to discuss everything with him, thus encour-
aging the upward movement of information to the apex of the organisa-
NATIONAL CULTURES AND CORPORATE CULTURE
165
tion, a process that contributes to learning. We must beware, therefore, of
dismissing the family metaphor as primitive, pretentious or feudal. Its inti-
macies can process complex information effectively, and wanting your
“father” to know a great deal may have more desirable results than nei-
ther expecting nor wanting your boss to know very much. A visionary
leader who mobilises his or her employees around superordinate goals
needs their trust, their faith and their knowledge. The family model can
often supply all three.
The results of the question posed in Chapter 7 on whether a company is
responsible for providing housing (see Figure 7.6) also show those nations
in which the family is a natural model. In these cultures there is almost no
boundary for the organisation’s responsibilities to the people in its employ.
These even extend to where and how they are housed. Japanese employers
make it their business as to whether you are married, how many children
you have and accordingly how much more you need to be paid. The com-
pany may help you find housing, help get your children into schools, offer
you consumer products at reduced prices, make recreational facilities
available and even encourage you to take vacations with work colleagues.
The belief is that the more the company does for your family the
more your family will wish its breadwinner to do for the company.
Thinking, learning and change
The family corporate culture is more interested in intuitive than in ration-
al knowledge, more concerned with the development of people than with
their deployment or utilisation. Personal knowledge of another is rated
above empirical knowledge about him or her. Knowing is less hypothetical
and deductive, more by trial and error. Conversations are preferred to
research questionnaires and insights to objective data. Who is doing
something is more important than what is being done. If you invite the
Japanese to a meeting they will want to know who will be there before spe-
cific details about the agenda.
Change in the power-oriented family model is essentially political, get-
ting key actors to modify policies. Among favourite devices are new
visions, charismatic appeals, inspiring goals and directions, and more
authentic relationships with significant people. Bottom-up change is
unlikely unless it is insurgent and seriously challenges the leaders, in
which case major concessions may be made.
Training, mentoring, coaching and apprenticeship are important
sources of personal education but these occur at the behest of the family
and do not in themselves challenge authority but rather perpetuate it.
Family-style. cultures can respond quickly to changing environments that
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166
affect their power. Their political antennae are often sharp.
A Dutch manager delegated to initiate change in the French subsidiary
of a Dutch group described to us how impressed he was at the precision
and intelligence of the French managers’ response to his proposals. He
returned three months later to find that nothing had happened. He had
failed to realise that it was also necessary to change the management
team; the strategic proposals had simply been a front behind which the
family continued to operate as before.
Motivating, rewarding and resolving conflict
Because family members enjoy their relationships they may be motivated
more by praise and appreciation than by money. Pay-for-performance
rarely sits well with them, or any motivation that threatens family bonds.
They tend to “socialise risk” among their members and can operate in
uncertain environments quite well. Their major weakness occurs when
intra-family conflicts block necessary change.
Resolving conflict often depends on the skill of a leader. Criticisms are
seldom voiced publicly; if they are the family is in turmoil. Negative feed-
back is indirect and sometimes confined to special “licensed” occasions.
(In Japan you can criticise your boss while drinking his booze.) Care is
taken to avoid loss of face by prominent family members since these are
points of coherence for the whole group. The family model gives low prior-
ity to efficiency (doing things right) but high priority to effectiveness
(doing the right things).
The Eiffel Tower culture
In the western world a bureaucratic division of labour with various roles
and functions is prescribed in advance. These allocations are co-ordinated
at the top by a hierarchy. If each role is acted out as envisaged by the sys-
tem then tasks will be completed as planned. One supervisor can oversee
the completion of several tasks; one manager can oversee the job of several
supervisors; and so on up the hierarchy.
We have chosen the Eiffel Tower in Paris to symbolise this cultural type
because it is steep, symmetrical, narrow at the top and broad at the base,
stable, rigid and robust. Like the formal bureaucracy for which it stands, it
is very much a symbol of the machine age. Its structure, too, is more
important than its function.
Its hierarchy is very different from that of the family. Each higher level
has a clear and demonstrable function of holding together the levels
beneath it. You obey the boss because it is his or her role to instruct you.
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