Good morning friends. Our presentation topic for today is adapting to corporate culture.

We hope to bring you a clear cut idea on this topic by the end of this presentation. Introduction The right time has come. In the next three to four months our Facebook occupation status will change from student to employee of a corporate industry. And then, in a year we will be working in a company getting huge salaries and we will be having our own world filled with our dreams and desires coming true. With these kind of feelings filling our heart we naturally tend to ignore few additional details. (i.e) the environment where will be put through after college will be completely new. New in the sense no more we will be a student there, we are entitled as a professional. Though strangers are welcomed in that environment, they may never be accepted unless they adapt to the norms of their new environment. This is where the subject of corporate culture comes into picture. Before we alter the culture we must first understand it. Culture: The word culture is a complex phenomenon. It has different meanings. For some it refers to the appreciation of good art, literature, music and food. This is the reason why we call college music and dance events as cultural events. For a biologist it is likely to be a colony of bacteria growing in a petridish. For anthropologist it is the full range of behavioral pattern acquired by a human as a member of a society. We will be discussing about culture with respect to the third category. As an example let s look at our human cultural characteristics 1. communicating with a verbal language consisting of a limited set of sounds and grammatical rules for constructing sentences 2. using age and gender to classify people (e.g., teenager, senior citizen, woman, man) 3. classifying people based on marriage and descent relationships and having kinship terms to refer to them (e.g., wife, mother, uncle, cousin) 4. raising children in some sort of family setting 5. having a sexual division of labor (e.g., men's work versus women's work) 6. having a concept of privacy 7. having rules to regulate sexual behavior 8. distinguishing between good and bad behavior 9. having some sort of body ornamentation 10. making jokes and playing games

As you can see these traits creates an identity that distinguishes human from others. It defines the quality of life. And the fascinating fact is these exist only in our mind and they do not exist as written documents. Culture doesn t appear suddenly, it also evolves over time as people grow and learn. There is no good culture or bad culture. There is only functional and non-functional culture. With this introduction on culture let s move on to culture in corporate industry and the role it plays in a corporate industry. Corporate culture: Corporate culture is the collective behavior of people using common corporate visions, goals, shared values, beliefs, customs and society. The first time when I saw this definition I couldn t understand anything. Hope the same occurs for you too. So let us go somewhat deeper into the definition. Corporate vision: Vision is a short inspiring statement that summarizes of what your organization intends to become and to achieve at some point in the future. E.g., Facebook vision: to give the people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Google vision: to organize the world s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The reason to have such statement is that, it promotes the company in the desired direction. It aligns the entire workforce s behavior with the vision. (i.e.)Each individual employee of the organization will work as per the company s vision and they won t deviate from their goal. So we have to know the vision of the company in which we are getting placed and focus our mind to achieve the company s vision. Values and beliefs: Values are the deepest trust we have that influence our judgment in terms of what is ethical and what is not. Belief is what is there when nothing is left to say. For example when you are being held by a criminal with a gun pointing right at your brain the last thing you believe is there is no bullet in the gun. Beliefs and values are in a way very much interconnected. When we believe in something deeply we will keenly adhere to it in every situations. As a result it becomes our habit and in turn adds to our value. For example when you believe that being punctual is right. You will be punctual to all meetings and you will be considered by the company as a punctual person. That is the belief punctuality that you had earlier has become your value now. These are termed to be our core values. When you are in an organization the organization expects you to follow some values. By values, they mean the qualitative goals which the company strives to achieve in all its activities. Values are considered to be the most important force in the company that drives the company towards progress, accomplishment and success. One best example could be the apple corporation. By these values we could understand their dedication towards enhancing the simple. Their attitude of achieving excellence and their focus on products that provides a significant contribution. All these values drive them towards nothing less than a grand success.

Customs: Custom dictates the expected manner of conduct for the culture. It prescribes the etiquette to be observed in dress, speech, courtesy and politics. Several companies, most notably IBM, have long understood the power of customs. These norms are established to project a particular image the company wishes to convey. Thus dress code, telephone etiquette also needs to be adapted when you are in an organization. It s also advisable to adapt formal communication practices (i.e.) Upward Communication b) Downward Communication c) Horizontal/Literal communication all such etiquettes
a)

As per the organizational management hierarchy.

Society: Society defines the class structure in an organization, from Chairman of the Board to the hourly worker. It defines government, laws and institutions which must be observed by its members. More often than not, the society is dictated by management as opposed to democratically selected by the workers.