According to the result of the examination of hundreds of business organization and they environment, Deal and Kenney noted two determining variables to categorize corporate cultures: They saw than:
• Companies’ activity exercise at various degree of risk
• they are not always aware of their OC success, because the speed of feedback could be very different, long or short, depend of the business
We can classify companies in 4 categories:
Tough-guy, macho culture: high risk/ quick feedback. The pressure is very important, financial stakes are high, decisions and applications are fast. In this kind of company, people are often is early “burn-out”. The atmosphere is stressful: competitiveness and individuality are the primary values, the cohesion is difficult.
Ex: police departments, surgeons, construction, sport, Entertainment industry, management consulting… France Telecom, DANONE…
Work-hard/play hard culture: low risk/ rapid feedback: Businesses that sell products with low value added, but in large quantities: it must be fast and dynamic. uncertainty is very low and responsibilities are not very important, there is little stress
Ex: Restaurants, software companies, sales organizations. Mc Donald’s…
Bet-your-company culture: high risk/ slow feedback : This kind of companies could wait years before knowing the success of their decisions, that why preparation and planning are very important: they want to avoid uncertainly, and have a lot of business meeting. The decision making is made from the top down. The quality of the products is good and the quality the technological researches are important. But the company move slowly and vulnerable in short-term fluctuation.
Ex: oil companies, investment banks, architectural firms…
Process culture: low risk/ slow feedback: companies where things need a lot of time to evolve: because they’re few feedbacks, people have difficulties to imagine the future and focus on safety and organization. They’re a lot of bureaucracy