Employees have made a down payment during the “crisis”

It is now up to the companies to invest in their own organization and the commitment and potential of their staffs so as to generate sustainability. The required conditions must first be created. But a sustained securing of the employees‘ commitment and satisfaction will require companies to change their way of thinking. If companies want to secure employee commitment for business success at a high level and for the long term, top managers, direct supervisors, and HR departments will have to analyze concretely the tensions between responsibility, flexibility, and differentiation, then delineate the appropriate paths to solutions.

So striving to achieve differentiation through products and services will no longer suffice to secure the competitiveness of companies in the future. Instead, the forms of cooperation between various parts of the company will become a strategic success factor. The ease with which the globalization is handled, the utilization of the global labor market, and the concentration on the distribution of labor and capacities across borders and cultural differences and on production optimization will be the primary differentiation factors of the future. Technology and the “global” village force the creation of consultation systems capable of functioning in real time and decisively influence corporate democracy.

An intact and value-based corporate culture is a guarantee for the ability to master these challenges, but in many cases is not adequately exploited as a differentiation criteria.

What organizational corporate culture really means

„Organizational culture is the body of traditions, values, rules, creeds, and attitudes which form a consistent context for everything that is done and thought in the organization“ (McLean and Marshall) – or to put it simply: “That is how we do it here” (Bright and Parkin).

In its implementation in organizations, this means especially the consideration of the details which are hidden behind the opinions and creeds (culture psychology): how and why do people think the way they do, thereby contributing to the reactions and behaviors that stamp the culture.

The following characteristics can be crystallized here: culture is “behavior“, culture is “what has been learned“, culture is ­practiced through interaction, culture is shaped by people, and culture is negotiated.