The Character of a Corporation: How Your Company's Culture Can Make or Break Your Business - Hardcover

Corporate culture is more than just a way to set the tone at work--it also affects the bottom line. That's why it's critical to understand your company's culture. Authors Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones argue that managers need to know if their business's culture helps or hurts, and how to change it, if necessary. Goffee and Jones know their stuff. As founders of the London-based consulting firm Creative Management Associates, they've helped launch programs to overhaul corporate cultures at such companies as Johnson & Johnson, Coopers and Lybrand, and Hilton Hotels. They've identified four basic cultures, each of which can be good or bad: the networked culture, the mercenary culture, the fragmented culture, and the communal culture. For example, do employees gossip and form cliques? That's the networked culture at its worst, and it's probably creating an atmosphere of distrust and cynicism that can damage the company's future. But networking can also mean open and effective communication--and constructive friendships--that can lead to the sharing of good ideas, all to the company's benefit.

The book includes handy diagnostic tools, so you can describe your own corporate culture. It also suggests ways to bring about change and offers tips on surviving in whatever culture you find yourself. The Character of a Corporation is instructive reading for managers who want to improve performance and for anyone looking to survive and thrive in the workplace. --Dan Ring

"'Culture,' like 'synergy' or 'competence,' is one of those words which is evocative yet ethereal. While culture is absolutely central to competitive success, few executives understand how to proactively shape the values, beliefs and mental models that form the foundation of long-term success. In The Character of a Corporation, Goffee and Jones succeed where many others have failed: they manage to pin down the butterfly of corporate culture, making the elusive tangible. In doing so, they have produced a eminently practical guide for executives who know that success derives as much from a company's soul, as from its products." -- Gary Hamel, coauthor,Competing for the Future, and Chairman, Strategos

"Here is a book which provides subtle insights into how social relationships can shape corporate cultures. The authors combine classic social analysis with hands-on consulting experience. The result is a highly readable guide to the character of your corporation ' and how to change it." -- John Hunt, professor, London Business School

"If you are interested in how to assess your corporate culture and lead change to maximize competitive advantage, read this book. It takes you to the intellectual heart of matters'but in a practical way that can help generate action." -- Alan Gaynor, CEO, British-Borneo Petroleum

"If you want to understand the amorphous concept and word "culture", read this book. If you want to know what you can and can't do about "culture", and why you can or can't, read this book. If you want to grasp what it takes, personally and ethically, to change "culture", read this book. What Carl Rogers did with communication, what Blake and Mouton did with the management grid, Goffee and Jones are doing with culture." -- Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

"In their celebrated Harvard Business Review article, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones had presented a very useful way to think about corporate cultures in terms of two dimensions: sociability and solidarity. In this book, they build on those ideas to provide some practical and well-illustrated "how to's" for managers to understand, evaluate and reshape the cultures of their organizations." -- Sumantra Ghoshal, London Business School, Co-author of Managing Across Borders and The Individualized Corporation

"The Character of a Corporation is a book about people -- the one asset of a company that is talked about more and understood less than any other. With ease and clarity, Goffee and Jones present complex issues and offer useable, analytic tools for improving your company's chance at success. Read it before the competition does." -- Rick Dobbis, president, Polygram, continental Europe