Corporate Culture

Aim:- Main of this research is to develop an understanding of the importance of corporate culture in an organization’ success and the managerial skill to influence it. Further it also explores the e-strategy development and implementation for UBS. 

Use of organizational culture model to achieve objectives

There are different types of culture models which can be used for achieving the organizational objectives such as Autocratic, is a culture model where the leader or manager of the organization takes full command on the employees regarding the decisions of the organizations. In this the staff is completely dependent on the boss, which helps in making decisions quicker and grabbing the opportunities, thus helping in achieving the organization goals. Other organizational models like Custodial model are based on economic resources through managerial direction of money. The workforce consecutively oriented towards benefits or security as well as dependence on company. There is also a supportive culture model in which the managers take full support of the organization employees, thus making them participate in the managerial decision helps in improving the culture of the organization. Under Collegial model, leaders create teamwork environment in business. The staff behaves in a self-discipline as well as responsible manner. All this culture models of organizations can help in achieving the organizational goals.

Difference between organizational and national culture

National culture is something which is basically related to the inherent values of a country and it devise the relationship between the leaders and its followers how it should be, it is important for a n organizational culture to follow the aspect so the national culture. The main and important difference between the organization cultures and national culture is dissimilarities between organizational cultures originate in performance among various companies, whereas national culture dissimilarities are initiate in different culture values. Individual deeply held values are related to its national cultures, for instance, normal vs. abnormal, good vs. evil, safe vs. dangerous as well as rational vs. irrational. These values are early learned deeply held and slowly modifies over the generations changes.

Corporate cultural profile in an organisation

The culture profile of an organization can be known through various ways that is by the working style of an organization, its employees, its services, and its financial and social responsibility. Culture profile of an organization can be analyzed through the following:

Organization goodwill:  the goodwill of an organization indicates the culture of an organization, as if there is a huge goodwill of an organization that it might be due to highly motivated and educated employees and managers.

Effective operations: If the policies and guidelines of an organization are being followed properly by the employees and it can be seen through the effectiveness of the operations then it shows the good culture profile of an organization, the culture of an organization can also be known the effectiveness of the business operations.

Financial results: Culture profile can be analyzed through the financial result of the UBS, Thus, some culture offers financial rewards for employee’s contribution in success, for example, profit sharing or bonus. This enforces good behavior and strong operation culture in business.

Good business environment: it is important to have a good employment behavior in order to maintain good culture profile,

Business-oriented approach: UBS   follows the business oriented approach, in order to increase the efficiency of leadership and valuation of leadership development. The UBS Leadership Institute was created to spearhead the task of developing a cultural unity or overarching framework of values so that the several levels of leadership were aligned with the business strategy.

Communication: Communication is an important aspect, for analyzing the corporate culture. For effectiveness of an organization,

Impact on achievement of objectives by an organization

Corporate culture of an organization is characterized by the organization’s core value being intensely held, clearly ordered and widely shared. The more the members that accept the core values, agree on their importance and are highly committed than stronger the culture is. Effectiveness requires that an organization’s culture, strategy, environment and technology be aligned. For different kind of organization and strategies different kind of culture is suitable-
For e.g. Market driven strategies - a culture that emphasizes individual initiation, high integration, technology and clear communication. For Product driven strategies- a culture which is high in control and minimizes risk and conflicts.
Objectives of the organization are driven by the culture, it acts as an invisible hand which supports and motivates employees to achieve them.

Corporate culture of an Organization

Corporate culture refers to a system of “Shared Meaning”. The basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by member of an organization. Patterns of beliefs, symbols, rituals, myths and behavior that have evolved over time. These in turn create common understanding among members as to what organization is and how its members should behave.

10 characteristics along which organizations differ-

• Individual Initiative- degree to which an individual have freedom, independence.
• Risk tolerance- degree to which an organization encourages its employees to take risk, be innovative and aggressive.
• Direction- degree to which an organization clearly define goal and objectives for its members.
• Integration- degree to which different units of an organization coordinate with each other.
• Management Support- degree to which a manager supports and motivates its sub ordinates.
• Control- Rules and regulations within an organization which over see member’s behavior.
• Identity- degree to which an employee relate itself with the organization as a whole.
• Reward System- degree to which an organization rewards on the basis of performance rather than seniority or favoritisms.
• Conflict Management- degree to which an organization encourages its employees to openly air their conflicts and criticism.
• Communication Pattern- degree to which communication in organization is restricted to formal hierarchy of a firm.

An organization is very big so it’s difficult to create same or uniform culture everywhere. Culture differs with different geographical locations or with different departments. Thus we can divide culture into two different set -

Dominant Cultur: It expresses the core values that are shared by a majority of the organization’s members. It is macro view of culture that gives an organization its distinct personality.

Subcultures : It can form vertically or horizontally. When one division of a conglomerate has a culture unique from that of other division of the organization a vertical subculture exists. When a specific set of functional specialists such as accountants or purchasing personal have a set of common shared understanding a horizontal subculture is formed. If an Organization has many subcultures and no Dominant culture its Organizational Effectiveness reduces.

Evaluation of UBS’s corporate climate

Existing culture of UBS’s offers support to employee’s personal as well as professional ambitions. It also encourages partnership. The business operates on values of teamwork, open mindedness, respect and honesty. With this cooperation of differences, the organization is more capable of helping its individuals, whether clients or employees (Our Culture, 2012).
Diversity an integral part of UBS’s corporate culture, the organization deals with it on everyday basis. This could be seen every day with the eyes of its client, employees along with communities in which it live and works (Sims, 2010). UBS has employed various measures and techniques for effectively managing diversity. Even though diversity initiatives scope of the business is global, they are locally determined, i.e. the organization is committed to local implementation or adaptation and regional coordination. The combine success of business is depends on employees unique involvement in every office of UBS across the world (Our Culture/Values, 2012).

Recommendations to improve corporate climate in an organization

Corporate culture of UBS is very strong but still it lacks integration at various levels. In order to fulfill these gaps company can adopt following practices:

Protecting Employees- Employees fear in reporting about unethical or questionable behavior of their supervisor and other employees. Thus, company should build some confidential channel for these workers. Another option might be keeping of suggestion box at safe locations, where employees could not be able to see about everyone’s reporting for bad behaviors (Gamage and Pang, 2003).

Training and Development- The employees of the company should be regularly involved with training and development programs so that they can deal with the diverse workforce.

Cross cultural exposure- The senior managers should be regularly exposed to the diverse culture of other countries. To achieve this task either cross cultural teams should be formed or employees should be sent to other countries in a global organization.

Evaluating Ethical Behavior- UBS should make on a regular basis an internal audit of ethics. It is assumed that compliance programs along with organizational ethics audits add huge value to business. The company is supposed to undertake an approach of top down to ethics (Sims, 2003). This is because by modeling as well as communicating behavioral standards from the top level of business down to the low level positions, helps in ensuring actual behaviors of employees. It also makes sure about no “distance” in standards of ethics. Thus, through regular evaluation of these standards, organizations can compliance with good climate or culture at workplace (Boulter, Dalziel and Hill, 2012).

Educating Employees- Improvement in corporate climate requires awareness about ethical culture among employees. One strategy to do this is offering classes in developing corporate climate. These classes could be provided in colleges or even through human resource unit within the company. This is a cost-effective and also practical approach to provide ongoing training along with motivation (Stein, 2007).

Framework for meeting the operational needs of an organization

UBS provides financial support to its customers. The operations of bank are generally design to improve its values in three key areas, i.e. creditability, trust as well as customer focused image. In order to build their creditability, the company can create greater service, accuracy, improvement, dedication, innovativeness, excellence, efficiency together with empowerment in its operations (Davies, 2011).
For creating trust within customers, it can provide service with full honesty, integrity, responsibility, loyalty and generosity. Further, there are some values which can establish consumer focus image of the business, such as, accountability, empathy, influence, discipline while interactions, flexibility in operations, security of their clients, friendliness relations etc. These values can give effective support in meeting specific strategic and operational needs of the business (Stead, Stead and Starik, 2004).

Stakeholders and communication strategies

Internal and external stakeholders of UBS

Following are the stakeholders of company: 

• Customers- These are the centre of their business activities. The organization builds and maintains relationship with their clients on the basis of integrity as well as trust. They also ask their customers for feedback, which help them in improving their service standards, for the reason to provide best experience. Customers define the strategies and focus of the organization (Our Stakeholders, 2012).
• Shareholders- The organization Investor relation team along with senior management constantly make interactions with investment community. This is done to ensure time or accurately distribution of latest development and financial results of the business. The company regularly communicates to its shareholders about their targets and strategy for group as well as business (Collardi, 2012).
• Employees- The fundamental of UBS to offer advance services to their customers is its employee’s dedication and skills. The company sustains honest or open dialogue within its senior management and employees (Our Stakeholders, 2012).
• Governments/Regulators- The efficiency or stability in financial market is greatly depends on political and regulatory environment. The UBS take active participation in political discussion to share about issues of corporate responsibilities and regulatory changes (Collardi, 2012).
• Suppliers- The organization is a major procurer of services and materials. It keeps several relations with its worldwide suppliers. Further, the company attempt to hold high level of ethical standards while communicating with its vendors.
• International organizations and initiatives- The Company takes participation and membership in various initiatives as well as organizations, which encourage sustainability and corporate responsibility advancement (Larcker and Tayan, 2011).
• Non Governmental organizations- UBS make regular interactions with NGOs and value their insights along with inputs (Collardi, 2012).
• Peers- The Company also frequently make discussions on corporate responsibility issues with their peer banks and mostly through associations, such as Swiss Banking Association or trade bodies (Our Stakeholders, 2012).

Evaluation of communication strategies

UBS makes use of internet to communicate with its prospects and customers. This communication strategy help it in building confidence among clients, create image of leadership, increase creditability, support organization of business by pursuing new clients and establishes depth of knowledge (Constructing an Effective Internet Communication Strategy, n.d).

Developing new communication strategies for stakeholders of UBS

Interactions with different stakeholders group pursues dissimilar objective. Hence, proper communication channels must be selected by the company, for the reason to attain its objectives. UBS should use both traditional as well as online communication strategy to address value, beliefs, customs and language of different stakeholders (Joia, 2007). New communications strategy is develop by taking into account customers cultural differences while shaping marketing messages. According to new communication strategy, line manger should studied about workers and obtain information. This information could be used at the time of communicating as well as motivating employees (Dudovskiy, 2012).

Development, implementation and monitoring of e-strategy for UBS

Implementing an e-strategy in UBS

There are three steps which can help in effective implementation of e-strategy:

Planning- it is very important part of the process, all the specifications and requirements of the project should be well defined and calculated under this step. This in relation to what is being expected from the company’s websites. It is very important that e-strategy is rested with business of the organization (Futcher, 2003). The configuration of computer is complete equipment set of organization, which would be used in accessing Internet for its trade.

Implementation- The Company must build its existence definitively and early. It could be possible through choosing a domain name, making registrations with search engines, selecting keywords, e-marketing of company’s name and also linking with several other sites (Epstein, 2004). In these following things should be consider: Determine web site complexity by taking into account its page numbers, elements on page, interactivity as well as site revision. Further, company should project its professional image through websites.

Monitoring- After the implementation is over it is very important for the organization to continuously monitor its processes with a certain benchmark.

Monitoring the e-strategy in UBS

The e-strategies implemented in an organization can be monitored using the services of independent monitoring sites. These are applications which help in determining number of clicks that any site of the organization receives. The number of clicks shows that e- strategies have proven to be effective in attracting customers. This is an effective tool for monitoring (Guideline on Internet Banking, n.d).

Contribution of e-strategy to competitive advantage of UBS

The organization has been able to garner significant competitive advantage owing to its e-strategies. The bank has adopted a differentiation strategy by providing its customers with an excellent net banking option. Other banks offer simple home banking options, but UBS is the first bank to introduce multifunctional home banking services. With help of this customers were able to access their accounts via internet with convenience and confidence. Thus, the bank leads in e-services area and has become the most trusted bank of all for its customers (Al-Mudimigh, 2007).

References

• Boulter, N., Dalziel, D. M. and Hill, J., 2012. Achieving the Perfect Fit. Routledge.
• Collardi, J. F. B., 2012. World Class Private Banking: Building a Culture of Excellence. John Wiley & Sons.
• Davies, B., 2011.Leading the Strategically Focused School: Success and Sustainability. SAGE Publications Ltd. 2nd ed. 
• Davis, J. M., 2003. Corporate Culture as the Driver of Transit Leadership Practices. Transportation Research Board
• Joia, A. L., 2007. Strategies for Information Technology and Intellectual Capital: Challenges and Opportunities. Idea Group Inc (IGI). 
• Larcker, D. and Tayan, B., 2011. Corporate Governance Matters: A Closer Look at Organizational Choices and Their Consequences. FT Press. 
• Shajahan, S., 2007. Organisation Behaviour. New Age International. 
• Shaw, H. W., 2010. Business Ethics: A Textbook with Cases. Cengage Learning. 7th ed. 
• Silverthorne, C., 2005. Organizational Psychology in Cross Cultural Perspective. NYU Press. 
• Sims, M. D., 2010. Creative Onboarding Programs: Tools for Energizing Your Orientation Program. McGraw-Hill Professional. 2nd ed.
• Sims, R. R., 2003. Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility: Why Giants Fall. Greenwood Publishing Group. 
• Srivastava, K. S., 2005. Organizational Behaviour and Management. Sarup & Sons. 
• Stanford, N., 2011. Corporate Culture: Getting It Right. John Wiley & Sons.

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