Culture is a powerful part of any group of people whether it is a country or an organization aiming to succeed, prosper and grow. The culture ultimately can optimize the group or destroy it and it is never more apparent than in an organization’s culture. Organizational culture can be technically is defined as the “the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization”, and we will use this definition to compare and contrast two organizations who are global leaders in their field to find out how the organizational culture affects the performance of the company as well as gain an insight into the employees perspective (Hill,2001) .
Among the big companies around the world we find PricewaterhouseCoopers as a global professional services company that holds its offices throughout United Kingdom and in many other countries. The operational changes and activities that took place inside the company were aimed at engaging the majority group. However, some of these changes are as follows: recruiting student management, using demographic flow rates in order to foresee the future changes of the organization.
Via intranet training of new employees, implementation of multi-channel communication in case that objectives should be re-enforced, introducing soft-targeting aimed at more under represented groups that are willing to apply for the position of Director as well as a Partner selection processes, high level support offer for participants in the Emerging Leaders program, coaching under-represented groups and monitoring the number of different main indicators like the companies make up, auditing Human Resources processes, handling specific diversity initiatives as well as conducting staff surveys.
According to the culture of the organization it is estimated that it is almost as successful as its business operations. Based on the atmosphere inside the company, the employees are very united and often attend many activities and after being surveyed results indicate most felt comfortable seeing work colleagues outside of the work environment. Also, besides the fact that there is lots of work to do, the workers feel comfortable sharing their personal life even during working hours.
Taking into account the working hours, it is up to employees to choose whether to work all the time or only five days in the week. Also, there is no overtime or time pressure, the employees are doing their jobs until the work is done. Nevertheless, the PricewaterhouseCoopers culture in two thousand and nine was voted one of the best companies to work for surveyed by working mothers.
It implemented a number of new programs, consisting of parental leave policy, expansion of the sick time policy, and appointing two partners who are dedicated full time to increasing “work life effectiveness” and diversity management, recruiting and retention and the reason that PricewaterhouseCoopers is widely accepted as an organizational culture frame setter is that they have lead the field in making changes to the organizational culture that most companies envy. Other organizational culture improvements PriceWaterhouseCooper have implemented include routine monitoring of a number of key diversity indicators such as the firm’s diversity makeup and using demographic flow rates to model how the current organization may change over time. What this means is that Price Waterhouse Cooper is determined and focused on diversifying its recruitment strategies and keeping on open eye on potential talent no matter what back ground they come from.
The organizational culture of PriceWaterhouse Cooper’s contrasts to that of Google Inc. which could be considered “unconventional” to say the least. Google’s vision statement, “continous innovation” as well as their mantra, Google revisits, reinvent, refresheses, recreates competitive advantage continuously can be heard on a daily basis and the organizational culture is driven into each employee from day one in their initial training period. Employees can be seen on any given day at the Google “campus playing volleyball , rockclimbing or napping in massage chairs. Work at Google ‘s considered comfortable and cozy that some Google employees are known to have difficulty leaving the office. Genentech CEO and Google board member Art Levinson says, “What draws people to both companies is the environment, one where they have an ability to pursue things largely on their own terms,” which means that Google emphasizes a sense of freedom and creativity in the workplace and allows employees to dictate their own terms (Hill, 2001). ).
Overall Google’s culture demonstrates a more defined and strong culture compared to that of Price Waterhouse as it is more unique and unconventional than the norm.Of course it is easy to spoil the employees as the company is very profitable and financially successful and the main question is whether this due to the companies organizational culture. If the company culture encourages the employees to be more open minded and free thinking this may give a reason why Google has become very successful. The founders of Google before they setup Google planned to nurture and foster a spirit of comradeship, cooperation and above all innovating, free thinking and openness when the company was launched and they have stuck to their words now that Google is the global leader in the field.
This type of organizational culture has helped Google accelerate and maintain the competitive advantage they set out to find initially as a startup in their friends garage. What this means is that Google builds tremendous loyalty within their employees as the culture offers them value which contrasts to that of PriceWaterhouse Cooper which historically has had very high turnover rates. Google on the other hand has very low turnover rates and receives about 1300 job applications per day. Both Google and PriceWaterhouse Cooper encourage their employees to work and play together what sets Google apart is that there is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to the company’s overall success. Low formality in terms of dress code and workplace attitude also are polarized by both companies.
PriceWaterhouse Coopers rule of thumb is dress slightly better than the client and casual wear is limited to Friday’s and summer where as at Google employees where whatever motivates them during the day and have free laundry services on site to help free up some time. Google may seem like an attractive to place to work and getting as job there is another story as the hiring practices have come under high scrutiny.
In general Google tends to hire from the most highly ranked schools such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton and will generally only consider applicants who have the highest grade point average. Short listed candidates are then assessed based on how well they think they would “fit” into the company’s culture. This contrasts with the hiring practices of PriceWaterhouse Cooper who emphasizes diversity and ability independent of what background they have or school they came from.
Conclusion
Overall one can learn and take points from each company’s organizational culture and make changes to suit the management, industry and goals of the business. What we have established is that organizational culture is important to the success of the company and for example if Google maybe was not able to afford the advantageous benefits the company offers to its employees, it has outlined and implemented a culture that can make sacrifices in certain areas and still have the frame work that the employees can follow. In general we can conclude that Google have more defined, consistent and strong organizational culture than PriceWaterhouse Cooper whether it has made it more successful cannot be determined.