Corporate Culture and Performance
Author: John P. Kotter
List Price: $32.00
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ISBN: 0029184673
Publisher: Free Press (07 April, 1992)
Sales Rank: 43,284
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 3 out of 5
Great for connecting the dots...
This book is a staple for anyone looking to connect the dots between tangible shareholder value and intangible assets. In our work at ThinkShed we often see companies struggling to make the connection between culture (as a metaphor and measure of their operating model) and the direct impact it can have on shareholder value.We work with companies to help them align their culture(s) to their stated strategy or two help them effectively merge cultures and we will often refer skeptical executives to this book. They read it and they get it! (We then help move them from "getting it" to "getting it done")
This book is a breath of fresh air in a sector that could well do with less rhetoric and more practical steps!
Rating: 4 out of 5
A great foundation for understanding corporate culture
This book, while very academic, gives a solid understanding of several theories about corporate culture and its effects on performance (both short-term and long-term). Rather than starting out with an agenda, they studied hundreds of companies taking analyst's and insider's opinions for information about the culture and then looked at the results. Probably the best finding was that the most successful cultures were those that valued all three interests- customers, shareholders, and employees- consistently.
Rating: 5 out of 5
important research on company performance
If you buy into the argument that the only responsibility of a business is to its stockholders and that paying attention to areas outside of this will result in a lesser-performing company, the research of two Harvard Business School professors suggests just the opposite. John Kotter and James Heskett studied the performance of 207 large firms over an 11-year period. They wrote of their findings: "Corporate culture can have a significant impact on a firm's long-term economic performance. We found that firms with cultures that emphasized all the key managerial constituencies (customers, stockholders, and employees) and leadership from managers at all levels outperformed firms that did not have those cultural traits by a huge margin. Over an eleven-year period, the former increased revenues by an average of 682 percent versus 166 percent for the latter, expanded their work forces by 282 percent versus 36 percent, grew their stock prices by 901 percent versus 74 percent, and improved their net incomes by 756 percent versus 1 percent."
Consider that final finding again: The companies that paid attention equally to customers, stockholders, and employees outperformed those that didn't in growth of net income over the 11-year period by a factor of 756. Paying attention to more than just returning profits to stockholders can have a huge payoff.
Heskett and Kotter's research presented in this book is important reading for anyone tracking company performance in relation to its culture.
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