Fierce Excerpts: A question of nomenclature regarding “company culture.” (HBR)

by | Apr 27, 2015 | Fierce Excerpts

Now Reading | Why “Company Culture” is a Misleading Term, HBR

https://hbr.org/2015/04/why-company-culture-is-a-misleading-term

culture

I am a big proponent of company culture and a personal fan of the word so the title of this article got my attention and made me particularly curious. In this HBR article, the author finds fault with culture being a vague term, loosely defined, and as such, not easily analyzed; hence, in his opinion, misleading and problematic. According to the author, here is how we generally define culture today.

Anthropologists—the group of academics who first used the term in an analytical sense—have never really agreed on what exactly culture means. In the 19th Century, E. B. Tylor defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” Most of the definitions of culture used in books about organizational culture and values follow the Tylorian definition. Culture is the values, practices, beliefs, etc. of a group of people. In other words, culture is everything; which basically means it’s nothing from an analytical perspective. The only really useful aspect of this definition is that culture involves groups (society) and that those groups share something. Otherwise, it’s pretty vague.

Traphagan says that since the 1980’s, anthropologists have come to think of culture more as a process, rather than a thing that people share. As such, it is constantly changing as people contest and innovate upon the rules and ideas that constrain their actions and ideas.

Here is one of his main issues with the word and why he finds it misleading:

The problem with the term “culture” is that it tends to essentialize groups: it simplistically represents a particular group of people as a unified whole that share simple common values, ideas, practices, and beliefs. But the fact is, such groups really don’t exist. Within any group characterized as having a culture, there are numerous contested opinions, beliefs, and behaviors. People may align themselves to behave in a way that seems as though they buy into expressed corporate values and “culture,” but this is just as likely to be a product of self-preservation as it is of actually believing in those values or identifying with some sloganized organizational culture.

I found this opinion to be very interesting and I will take it to heart in future company culture explorations on behalf of our clients, but I don’t fully agree with it. Having helped shape and define corporate company cultures with many of our clients, I believe in the process and its importance to a brand and I have seen the benefits of it. I think “culture” is an important word and one that teams understand and identify with. Traphagan goes on to address what he feels the solution should be to this issue of nomenclature:

Corporations and other organizations do not have cultures; they have philosophies and ideologies that form a process in which there is a constant discourse about the nature and expression of values, beliefs, practices, ideas, and goals. This discourse happens in sales meetings, interactions with customers, board meetings, and in conversations around the water cooler. It’s a constantly moving target.

Here is one of my favorite definitions of culture from Inc. Magazine:

Culture refers to the shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that characterize members of an organization and define its nature….As such, it is an essential component in any business’s ultimate success or failure.

However you define it or reference it within your company, it’s a critical element to your brands success. The best indicator that you have a healthy company culture is that you don’t have to talk about it at all.