The Culture of Business and America
I have heard people talk about “culture” in relation to business organizations, but I’ve also heard variations when people define the concept of culture in a practical way.
My understanding of culture’s definition is the real and expected standards of conduct. In other words, the attitudes and behavior that get rewarded and punished, or those that fit and those that don’t work so well.
The reason I refer to the term “real” is because there are numerous organizations that communicate their culture related purposes, values and principles. However, the real standards of conduct are too often disparate from the signs on the wall, statements in the employee handbook or the CEO’s speeches.
In my opinion, a healthy culture includes integrity and responsibility to oneself and others. These critical factors sustain an organization through challenging times and the long term. A healthy culture is what enables teams to excel and endure, where a collection of talented people who lack a healthy culture will more likely whither and fail.
When I think about the severe economic crisis in America, fundamental integrity and responsibility come to the forefront as cultural factors that will carry us forward or continue to drag us down, no matter the scope and power of stimulus and regulation. For me, it is a culture lacking in integrity and responsibility that produced the recklessness and fraud that got us into this mess, and we’ve got to turn that around to get out of it.
As Americans, we all must push ourselves and lean on our colleagues to exemplify ethical and responsible attitudes and conduct. Current examples of school employees giving up salary so coworkers could stay employed; a business owner sharing millions in company sales proceeds with current and past employees; and a CEO taking out ads to encourage fellow executives to retain employees for less short term profit, should become the rule and not the exception. At the very least, doing business with real and consistent integrity and responsibility is what is sorely needed to get us back to prosperity and keep us there.
