Question

Impact of Culture on Business – Deloitte Insights

The importance of culture is readily apparent when things go wrong. When two large companies merged last year, for example, it became clear that one company had a culture of “low cost” while the other had a culture of “quality service.” Employees received mixed signals for months until the new management team took the time to carefully diagnose and redefine many business processes throughout the company. Given the importance of culture and the consequences of cultural issues, many companies are proactively defining culture and issuing culture “manifestos.” The Netflix culture presentation, often used as an example, has been downloaded more than 12 million times since 2009. The presentation clearly describes a culture that combines high expectations with an engaging employee experience: Generous corporate perks such as unlimited vacation, flexible work schedules, and limited supervision balance a strong focus on results with freedom and appreciation for the expected achievement. The financial services industry, still restoring its brand after the 2008 financial crisis, is sharply focused on culture. One organization is using a variety of initiatives to help employees understand “how the bank does business,” including offering speaker series on topics such as compensation packages, customer satisfaction, and maintaining regulatory standards. Citigroup has an entire committee focused on ethics and culture and has implemented a series of web-based videos detailing real workplace ethical dilemmas. Bank of America is focusing its corporate culture transformation on encouraging employees to report and escalate issues or concerns, as well as incorporating a risk “boot camp” into their current training. Wells Fargo is increasing its efforts to gather employee survey feedback to understand current trends and potential areas of weakness in its culture. A new industry of culture assessment tools has emerged, enabling companies to diagnose their culture using a variety of well-established models. Yet despite the prevalence of these tools, fewer than 12 percent of companies believe they truly understand their culture. That’s where HR can help. As businesses try to understand and improve their culture, HR’s role is to improve the ability to curate and shape culture actively. An organization’s capabilities to understand and pull the levers of culture change can be refined and strengthened. HR has a natural role to play in both efforts. As operations become more distributed and move to a structure of “networks of teams,” culture serves to bind people together and helps people communicate and collaborate. When managed well, culture can drive execution and ensure business consistency around the world. HR has an opportunity to assume the role of champion, monitor, and communicator of culture across, and even outside, the organization. Once culture is clearly described, it defines who the company hires, who gets promoted, and what behaviours will be rewarded with compensation or promotion. Nordstrom has formed a People Lab Science Team in an effort to define and curate a culture that will attract top talent and enable the retailer to compete with tech companies such as Tableau and Microsoft. The team takes a multidisciplinary approach to designing programs to define and reinforce Nordstrom’s culture. Starbucks analyzed thousands of social media entries to gain an objective view of its culture through the eyes of its employees and take specific actions to reinforce its cultural strengths and address cultural weaknesses. Securitas Belgium has defined the behaviors associated with its vision for culture, performed an analysis of its current state, and developed a detailed, measurable change plan for 150 of its managers. Software giant SAS was recently rated the best place to work by the Great Place to Work Institute. It is also highly successful, with 37 consecutive years of record earnings (it earned $2.8 billion in 2012). SAS has identified trust as a critical cultural attribute and regularly surveys its employees on elements of trust: communication, respect, transparency, and being treated as a human being. Once an organization develops a clear understanding of its culture and decides on a direction for cultural change, it is critical to move rapidly from analysis to action. Moving from talking to doing is the only way to build momentum. For companies pondering a cultural transformation, the time to start is now— because many companies are already way ahead.

Question

Discuss the role of Religion and Education in modern business transformation with appropriate examples.

Answer 1

ROLE OF RELIGION IN MODERN BUSINESS

Industrious Protestants were the first successful capitalists

Weber's thesis that religion matters became one of the most influential (and most quoted) papers in social sciences and has been heavily discussed ever since. Indeed there's a correlation: The oldest capitalistic region in the world, England, is predominantly Protestant; in some countries, such as Switzerland or France, the Protestants were especially thrifty and attracted to business; and the economic rise of the United States of America was driven for the most part by Protestant immigrants from Europe.

It's the pursuit of education that makes believers more successful

If the decisive factor for the economic success of believers is not the belief itself, but the appetite for education, the trophy for the most economically successful religion can change hands. A 2016 study by Pew Research Center on religion and education around the world saw Judaism in a strong lead (with more than 13 years of schooling on average) followed by Christians (nine years), Buddhists (eight years) and Muslims and Hindus (both with less than six years). In the younger generation, however, Buddhists have reached almost the same schooling level as Christians.

A common mission is beneficial for the corporate climate

In business, religion can also be a dynamizing factor. There are a lot of entrepreneurs who identify themselves with a religion – from the Catholic Brenninkmejier family running the C&A retail chain to Islamic banking or real estate agents with links to Scientology. As with military success stories, business cases linked to a religious attitude often take place in an early stage of expansion: The unifying effect of one strong belief can lead to a more coherent, focused, motivated workforce and can be a decisive factor in beating the competition as the company represents more than just an opportunity to earn money.

HOW DOES IT EFFECT BUSINESS

Religion is a systematic set of beliefs that influences human behavior. These religious beliefs have significant impacts on certain types of international businesses. ... Such a belief may reduce demand for any product deemed unnecessary.

10 most important functions of Religion

1. Religion provides mental peace
2. It inculcates social virtues
3. Religion promotes social solidarity
4. Religion converts the animal qualities to human qualities
5. Religion is an agent of socialization and social control
6. Religion promotes welfare
7. Religion gives recreation
8. Religion influences economy

EXAMPLES :

Effects of Religion on Trade

Religious belief may influence trade in two ways. First, a shared religious belief may enhance trust and therefore reduce transaction costs between trading partners. This effect should be particularly important for goods that are sensitive to trust.

ROLE OF EDUCATION IN MODERN BUSINESS

Education raises people's productivity and creativity and promotes entrepreneurship and technological advances. In addition it plays a very crucial role in securing economic and social progress and improving income distribution

Education is an important tool that is applied in the contemporary world to succeed, as it mitigates the challenges which are faced in life. ... This thus, makes education to become a norm for services in all industrial sectors. The primary skills and the ability to apply the skills is the basis for evaluating the market.

Some people don’t think that formal education plays a big role in shaping entrepreneurship skills. Even they need to admit that business college diploma definitely brings opportunities for developing an astonishing career. Some people like to point out that great entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, didn’t receive formal business education, but they tend to forget the fact that such a great entrepreneurs lived to learn. In one of his speeches Steve Jobs pointed out that the only way everyone can get an equal opportunity is to equip every child with great education, which is in his opinion more important thing, even than a great family life.

How does education affect business?

A country's economy becomes more productive as the proportion of educated workers increases since educated workers can more efficiently carry out tasks that require literacy and critical thinking. However, obtaining a higher level of education also carries a cost.

Is Education Necessary for Business?

Many business owners choose not to pursue the education route, and there's no requirement for them to do so. However, it's a useful way to progress the understanding of the inner workings of a business, and can make life easier in the long run.

6 Most Important Functions of Business

• Production function: Production is the creation of goods and services with the help of certain processes.
• Marketing function
• Finance function
• Human Resource (HR) function
• Information function
• Innovation