RELATIONS BETWEEN

NATIONAL AND
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE—
CASE STUDY OF KING GAMES
International Management

Submitted by Group 5:
Vaibhav Singh- 143116
Shouradeep Dutta- 143101
Lavanya Khare 143076
Nikunj Mittal- 143092
Vaibhav Kapoor- 143058
Nikhil Kumar Singh- 291131
Shavik Baral- 143097
 TABLE OF CONTENT

S.N Topic Page No.

o
1 Introduction 1
2 Purpose of the study 1
3 Methodology 1
4 Findings 2
5 Discussion and Conclusion 6
INTRODUCTION
It is undeniable that culture has an impact on international company management methods and
approaches. National cultural systems, as well as individual cultures, have been proven in several studies
to have a significant impact on the corporate cultural system in a variety of ways. Managerial decision-
making, leadership styles, and human resource management methods, for example, are all influenced by
country culture. Similarly, management functions such as communication, motivation, organisational
design, people's expectations of work design, and incentive systems are influenced by country cultures.
Furthermore, many national institutions such as labour laws, educational and vocational training methods,
and industrial norms and regulations impact organisational policies (e.g., human resource policies).
Culture, in essence, organises values into mental programmes, and people's behaviour in organisations is
an execution of these programmes. Organizations might be identical in objective dimensions such as
physical plant, layout, or product, but have vastly diverse meanings as interpreted by the surrounding
human cultures. Organizational culture is shaped not just by technology and markets, but also by the
cultural preferences of leaders and workers. National culture has a significant influence on people's
perceptions, understandings, and evaluations of those with whom they work. Interpersonal trust,
cooperation, and the position of women in the workplace, among other things, are all influenced by
cultural norms. Cultural differences have a huge impact on how individuals live their lives and conduct
themselves at work. A human group's behaviour to its environment is influenced by culture, which is an
interacting collection of shared features. If cultural differences are not adequately recognised and
acknowledged, commercial disasters might occur.

PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY

The purpose of this study is to determine how organizations of a specific country use their national
culture to define their organizational structure, both internally and externally. This study tells us how the
management style of an organization is governed by the cultural values of the country of the organization
and how firms use it to gain a competitive advantage in the market.

METHODOLOGY
The research was based on a case study conducted at the Swedish headquarters of gaming firm King
Games as well as its Spanish office.

King Games as a firm requires a minimal introduction. King.com Limited, doing business as King and
also known as King Digital Entertainment, is a social game developer located in St. Julian's, Malta. King
Gaming rose to prominence after releasing the cross-platform game Candy Crush Saga in 2012, which is
widely regarded as one of the most commercially successful freemium games ever. Along with their vast
portfolio of unique IP, they have also exhibited a culture of innovation. Whether it's bringing online
games to social media, developing completely synchronized gaming from Facebook to mobile,
experimenting with HTML5, or collaborating directly with top browsers and platforms, we've got you
covered. The publisher has established a new development studio in Barcelona, where it plans to hire
more than 40 people to work on mobile and casual social gaming projects. King Games is particularly
appealing to Barcelona because it offers a diverse range of high-quality services, is well-connected, and
has a convenient position that allows for quick access to Europe and the rest of the globe.
One of the reasons we chose this global corporation to conduct the research was the firm's stringent and
well-known uniformity of games, methods, and practises, which the company touts as "Swedish
Heritage." The firm has been able to establish an internal environment based on institutionalized
procedures that try to remove hierarchical barriers in terms of human resources practices, in which it
strives to improve the well-being of its employees. For example, academic titles are prohibited in
everyday interpersonal interactions, and most employees, regardless of their hierarchical level, wear
uniforms.

The organizational case study was conducted in the King Games headquarters in Sweden and Spain.
Product managers from each office were interviewed in-depth. We focused on product managers because
we believe they play a critical role in the transmission and maintenance of corporate culture.

The interviews began with an open question, in which respondents were questioned about their personal
and professional life, educational paths, and past job experiences, as part of a semi-structured approach.
Most of the interviews included references to the relationship between organizational and national
cultures, not just when respondents were reflecting on their current work life, but also when they were
discussing prior job experiences or beliefs about living and working in various countries. When the issue
of culture was not completely established, the respondents were invited to provide their perspectives on
the rationale for specific behaviours, as well as broad thoughts about how people work and live in their
native countries and in other nations. The material was thematically classified and analysed after the
entire transcription of the interviews.

The personnel of the workplaces in Spain and Sweden, the two nations considered for this study, show
considerable disparities. Sweden is often seen as a model of northern European societal organization, with
an ideally universal system of social security, strong centralized and state-independent industrial
relations, generally high educational levels for the working population, a fair distribution of income, and
low levels of social inequality within the European framework. In contrast, Spain typically embodies a
southern European model, which includes an under-protective social security system, a centralized and
state-dependent industrial relations model, significant numbers of low-skilled workers on the labour
market, and one of Europe's highest levels of social inequality. A comparison of nations with this degree
of dissimilarity was deemed adequate for the study aims, and as we shall explain later in this article, the
respondents connected these differences with larger views of the two countries' working cultures.

FINDINGS
The implicit and explicit learning of a collection of components in an organization's life: how to do the
job, who's who inside the firm, who has authority, and what the organization's aims, values, and history
are, is closely connected to the socialization of employees in that organization. This learning process is
carried out at King Games at key times in an employee's career path, such as during recruiting or training,
and in the culture, with promotion campaigns occurring every five years across the board.

When it comes to hiring, some organizations use the approach of selecting people who share their values,
based on the idea that while many experts may meet the job's technical requirements, only a few would
suit the company's culture. Following this technique, King Games uses a "culture fit quiz" throughout the
recruitment process to determine how adaptable potential recruits are.
The firm frequently employs stories and rituals in its everyday operations to perpetuate its culture and
stimulate the learning of its operating procedures. Symbols play a significant role in these cultural
transmission processes. These are used to reflect the culture, values, or internalized norms of an
organization.

The business idea and the organizational culture, according to the company's official viewpoint, have
dictated King Games' success. Specific assumptions about Swedish national culture aid in the articulation
of these two characteristics, and may be found in the company's everyday operations.

On the one hand, the company's concept is focused on promoting a "Nordic lifestyle" that incorporates
elements of Swedish history and culture. For many years, the organizational approach was heavily
focused on preserving "what is Swedish." Managers in all nations, for example, were formerly
encouraged to study Swedish in order to have a better grasp of the corporate culture and advance in their
careers. The firm's branding is also heavily reliant on the usage of Swedish symbols as instruments to
create a parallel between the "quality" of its games and the "quality" of Sweden as a country, particularly
in terms of its social model, company internationalization, and product quality.

“The following remark can be found on the King Games website: "The King Games idea, like its
originator, was born in Smaland." The soil is shallow and poor in this area of southern Sweden.
The people are known for working hard, living on a tight budget, and utilising their minds to get
the most out of their few resources. The King Games method of developing low-cost customer-
centric games is based on this style of thinking. Sweden is known across the world for its
creativity and dependability, and King Games takes pleasure in providing high-quality games in
all settings.”

This link between organizational and national culture is evident in the discourses of our respondents since
branding is heavily present in recruiting and penetrates the employee’s trajectory within the business.
This tight link is rooted in preconceived notions about Swedish work practices. In our study, Spanish
respondents systematically linked certain of the company's internal procedures to its Swedish background,
contrasting them with what they perceived to be normal Spanish working norms. This was particularly
apparent when it came to job organization and time management. The Swedish management style was
regarded as practical and time-saving, but the Spanish counterpart was regarded as inflexible and
bureaucratic.

The need of avoiding these "particularly Spanish" modes of working was also mentioned in support of the
desire of the Spanish office of King Games for a more "international" staff. In this respect, it's worth
noting that, at the time of our research, 91.5 percent of the staff in the Spanish office was made up of
Spaniards, whereas the proportion of Swedish nationals was slightly lower in Sweden (87 per cent).

“I believe it would be a waste of time if we were to make the company Spanish in terms of
working time, for example (...). We only have one studio now, and the culture is still alive, but
when we have six or seven, we may not know each other as well, we may not have as many
foreigners working here as we have now, we may have more Spanish, and we must be cautious.
We must keep this culture, this Nordic civilization, alive and well. (…) When I'm at work, I'm
usually working. The Swedes operate in this manner. We don't squander any of our time. We
 have five- or ten-minute sessions since we are extremely informal. As soon as we exit the
conference room, things begin to happen. We don't have the same level of formality or follow the
same set of regulations... We are anti-bureaucratic.” (P1, Spain)

“This is a Swedish company,” says the narrator. There are a lot of foreigners here. It's great that
we're not all Spanish and can mix with different cultures. As a result, we arrive early, eat early,
and depart early. Other organizations and I know this from experience, have a propensity to start
working later, rather than 8 a.m., 9 or 10 a.m., and then, obviously, you can't do everything by 6
p.m., so you remain until 7 or 8 p.m.” (P2, Spain)

Managers tend to assume very openly that there is a common perception about Sweden that has to be kept
and spread, based on the company's attitude to the association of Sweden with high-quality standards.

“The quality profile that exists in Swedish culture must be reinforced. We usually connect the
Swedish and Nordic populations with quality (...) I have to communicate what we term
"Swedishness," which is communicating the concept of industrialized nations having a higher
quality, so that people may link that quality with the firm." (P3, Spain)

However, there was a link between ostensibly Swedish cultural aspects and the company's actions in other
sectors. For example, the company's policies of pursuing an egalitarian and gender-balanced workforce
and encouraging a healthy work-family balance were justified as a cultural legacy and a manner of
bringing workers' life and working habits closer to those in Sweden. The firm portrays itself as a family-
friendly employer, with rules that allow for flexible working hours, part-time work, and the integration of
work and personal life. When an employee has a kid, the firm also gives them a symbolic present. In
Spain, the firm offers employees the option of taking more parental leave than the law allows, as well as
offering a financial incentive upon the birth of a child and creating procedures with local kindergartens so
that employees may benefit from lower pricing or greater access. Some of these behaviours have become
internalized in Sweden and the Nordic nations as being closely linked to preconceived notions about work
and life.

The link between the firm and the national culture was not always connected with a particularly Swedish
manner of working in the interviews with Swedish workers. Some of the company's internal procedures,
such as time management, were also prevalent in other Swedish firms, therefore they were frequently left
out of these experts' accounts. At the same time, some of these executives had previously worked for
Swedish businesses that had quite different policies than King Games, particularly in terms of family
assistance.

“I was working as a manager at a bakery before joining King Games, and I didn't think that
employer was as wonderful as I had imagined. The working conditions were poor, and the firm
was solely concerned with its own well-being rather than those of its employees. (…) My two co-
workers were a couple, and when their children became ill, they were not permitted to stay at
home with the sick child. That is not only unhealthy for the environment, but it is also illegal.
These events continued to occur, creating an environment in which individuals were
dissatisfied”. (P4, Sweden)

This undercuts the claim that these procedures are practised by all or almost all Swedish businesses.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The firm we've just discussed is a good example of how national culture may be integrated into an
organization's culture. Its organizational approach to culture began to emerge during the
internationalization process. As a result, the brand has always been associated with Swedish national
culture, and it has benefited from Sweden's positive image in terms of economic growth - particularly
through the proliferation of international businesses - and social development, particularly through the
establishment of a universal social model. This so-called "national model marketing" is commonly
utilized not just to distribute products and services, but also to transmit internal processes. Employees
from all the company's operating nations come into touch with some characteristics of the organization's
culture that are portrayed as particularly Swedish on a regular basis.

Our findings reveal, first and foremost, how the link between national and organizational culture is deeply
embedded in the company's public image, particularly in the way it presents itself to the public, whether
through Swedish symbols or explicit associations with Sweden in the presentation of its history, products,
and business. Second, we were able to validate the link between certain of the company's practices and a
purported Swedish style of organizing work, which is particularly prevalent in non-Swedish discourse and
portrayed as a contrast to other ways of working in other countries.

Practical, open, informal management and control methods, as well as concern for workers' personal lives
and families, were associated with Swedish working culture, whereas hierarchical and bureaucratic
practices, as well as long hours, were assumed to be typical Spanish way of working in our case. As a
result, culture was used to justify the adoption of particular work practices. Finally, we were able to
establish the significant absorption of the link between national and organizational cultures by analysing
the managers' discourses. Both the Spanish and Swedish respondents recognize a significant link between
the Swedish and the company's organizational culture, albeit the Spaniards prefer to express the
company's "Swedishness" more forcefully than their Swedish counterparts.

Rather than a process of cultural negotiation, resistance, or national identity control, this instance
demonstrates a well-articulated interaction between the founding culture, in this case, Swedish, and the
host country's culture, Spain. While some organizational procedures are explained as being linked to
unique Swedish ways of working, cultural aspects of the host country are retained, such as the working
language or national holidays in Spain. In reality, King Games appears to be an instance of cultural
integration, with the attraction to culture (in this case Swedish), with a degree of preservation of other
nations' cultures, particularly in terms of language, food, and national festivals. This allure is based on a
formalized organizational strategy that leverages certain characteristics of national culture as a unifier and
a tool for strengthening organizational culture throughout the globe.

Part of the strategy's efficacy is shown by the company's identification with its Swedish beginnings,
notably among non-Swedish employees, but also among Swedes themselves. We were able to observe
that the assimilation of these Swedish cultural elements is positively accepted by the Spanish managers,
even functioning as a social distinction from other companies and workers in the country, given that the
image of Sweden as a developed country and model to follow persists in broad sectors of European public
opinion. This is unsurprising, especially when we consider that the Swedish work methods are mostly
favourable to Spanish employees.
In addition to these cultural integration processes, our research opens the door to a consideration of
specific processes of identity redefinition in the host nations. There was a definite adoption of a perceived
"Swedishness" in their work methods, according to the Spanish managers' narratives.

Our example exemplifies the link between national and organizational cultures, but this powerful
combination only benefits the firm because of a set of structural patterns that Sweden as a country
possesses. This is true not only for commercial objectives but also for non-Swedish employees'
acceptance of certain cultural aspects, especially in less developed countries.

The utilization of a supposedly Swedish lifestyle as a branding and marketing tool demonstrates the
efficacy of the concept in today's worldwide marketplaces. Indeed, a variety of companies across a range
of industries frequently employ social representations and the historical context of their country's national
culture to promote and advertise their products. This is true, for example, in Germany's automobile
industry and Italy's wine business. The strategic link between the place of origin and the quality of the
company's goods is not unexpected, given that design is undoubtedly one of the sectors for which the
Scandinavian nations are most recognized. When this argument is employed to explain organizational
methods, however, its adoption is heavily dependent on the differing positions of power between the
nations concerned, whether economic, political, or symbolic.

Within the European environment, as well as in the global economic market, Spain and Sweden represent
two distinct types of institutional functioning and economic development. The prestige of the Swedish
design industry, as well as the history of Swedish firms' globalization, provide this organization
indisputable authority when it comes to business execution. Furthermore, the country's socio-economic
development levels, which encompass not only the general functioning of the labour market but also work
for the organization and working circumstances, legitimize the adoption of specific organizational
methods to a considerable extent.

The favourable acceptance of the company's "Swedishness" by Spanish managers, as well as its usage as
a social differentiation strategy in comparison to other firms operating in Spain, contrasts with the
normalcy with which they are carried out in the Swedish establishment. Although the Swedes recognize
the link between their country's national culture and the company's history, the justification of the
company's internal practises as "typically Swedish" is easily deconstructed in their discourses, with
references to previous work experiences in Swedish companies with vastly different practises. This
emphasizes the strategic importance of cultural uses in companies, as well as the importance of
researching country-specific instances to explain variance in cultural exchange processes. As a result, we
were able to emphasize the importance of context in the analysis of processes of culture formation,
transmission, dissemination, and reception in multinational settings, contributing with a specific case in
which the history and characteristics of the company and the countries involved are crucial, namely the
unequal power relations grounded in the countries' material and symbolic circumstances.