Managing Culture by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

Emerging  evidence indicates that socially responsible businesses continue to financially outperform those that make no special effort to manage their social and environmental impacts.

In particular, the international investment community has recognized that corporate, environmental and social governance issues can  affect  the  performance  of their portfolios and are looking to minimize risks. Although only lunched in 2006, the joint UN Global Compact and UN Environmental Programme financial initiative scheme ,     the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, already has 560 signatories actively developing policies that embed sustainability into maistream decision-making and ownership practices.

Such development are not simply the result of the spread of corporate responsibility among financial institutions. There is a clear economic argument due to the increasing value of the company's intangible assets. Consequently, investors are having to pay more attention to  intangibles including the quality of management , brand strength, intellectual capital and even a sustainability profile.

Corporate culture is obviously a key intangible. It is a blend of company values, taboos, symbol and myths that have developed overtime into a deep -  rooted , tacit code that defines behavioral expectations and shapes performance. Taking their cue from science of management , many organizations have been   trying to leverage their organizational cultures for business improvement.

At one extreme, business have engaged in a form of social engineering in which they define personal attributes and competencies they want in their employees. They then hire, train, promote and reward on the basis of those criteria.

Other strategies used to manipulate corporate culture have included re-branding , attempts at blatant propaganda and a widespread outbreak of the "vision-mission-values" phenomenon. But how successful are businesses at managing culture? Certainly all organizations had unique culture long ago. Moreover, the modern workplace with its increasingly diverse composition makes it more difficult to define, measure or change corporate culture.

Although management does usually have the best of intentions, initiatives that meddle with prevailing culture rarely fulfill  their expectations. To begin with, some programmes are "tick -in the-box" exercises in which vision-mission -values are assembled without any deep appreciation of the existing culture. Others, simply fail to communicate the message effectively-the vision-mission -values appear in the intranet without explanation.

Alternatively, lack of progress  might be due to ever increasing complexity of modern business and widening range of issues competing for management attention in these difficult times. Policy trade-offs , compromises and conflicts present daily challenges to management.

Should this disappoint us? When viewed as super-organisms, businesses have much in common with tribal societies. They often reflect the complex mixture of altruism and selfishness that characterize human nature. Although not designed to be all-singing social unit that defined our ancestral tribes , a great deal of our personal satisfaction and well-being is derived from our working lives.

For many people, the work-life balance is fundamentally flawed -work is an important part of life, a place of social interaction from which we derived self esteem and gain recognition. This is especially true where we can easily buy into the prevailing corporate culture and its tacit moral code.

Conversely, if the organization focuses too heavily on one of its strategic objectives, it will have a damaging effect on its culture and business. For example, concentration on the single minded pursuit of profit has been a contributory factor in the recent international banking crisis.

So, who do we blame when corporate culture is dysfunctional? Naturally, we tend to point our finger at political or business leadership. We put out trust in leaders, acquiescing or tacitly condoning their excesses, but turning on them with the tide. We rely on them to do the right thing, but recent revelations about politicians and their expenses indicates that a substantial proportion of our leaders are a little better than self-serving crooks. The same can apply to corporate mandarins where governance structure are generally powerless to rein in excesses. Is there a better way or do we have to live with the leaders we deserve?