CORPORATE CULTURE AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS: IS THERE A SIMILAR PATTERN AROUND THE WORLD?

This chapter presents two studies that examine the link between corporate culture and effectiveness in a variety of national settings. The first study compares results from 230 organizations from Europe, North America and Asia and reveals a surprising level of similarity in results across these regions. The second study presents the results from targeted samples of 218 supermarkets from Canada, Australia, Brazil, the U.S., Japan, Jamaica, and South Africa. These results show a common pattern in five of the countries, and a divergent pattern of findings in Jamaica and Japan.

The results suggest that it is quite possible to measure and compare the cultural traits of organizations and their impact on business performance across nations, and to find empirical support for a general framework. But how can these findings be reconciled with the vast literature on cross-cultural differences? Discussion of this point reaches an interesting conclusion: Perhaps there is a common set of cultural traits that can be used to understand the effectiveness of organizations, but that are expressed quite differently in different national settings.