Relating Culture and Strategy

We have seen that strategy and culture are interlinked; culture affects how-a strategy may be implemented though it has a role in strategy formulation too. Our emphasis here is to analyze how organizational culture can be made a facilitating factor in ‘strategy implementation. In relating strategy and culture strategists have four alternatives:

• To ignore corporate culture;
• To adapt’ strategy implementation to suit corporate culture;
• To change corporate culture to suit strategic requirements; and
• To change the’ strategy to ‘fit the corporate culture.
• Each of these alterative has different”’ implications for the total strategic management now let us see how a particular alternative is relevant.
• Strategists can simply ignore the corporate culture while implementing a strategy especially when it is not possible to change corporate culture. In fact. Corporate culture is built over a period of time and. therefore cannot be changed overnight; cultural change is a slow process and is time- consuming. Ignoring culture in strategic management is not better alterative because it may be dysfunctional.
• Another alternative to the above is to change strategy implementation to suit corporate culture. Strategists may have flexibility in organisational design.-organizational systems and processes for strategy implementation. These variables can be manipulated to sub serve the interests of ‘corporate culture. However. In such a case, each specific situation in the organisation calls for an innovative solution.
• The third alternative is to change the strategy itself if it does not fit with the corporate culture. However. Changing strategy mid-way is- not a very desirable proposition. Therefore, corporate culture should -be considered as a determinant of strategic choice.
• The last alternative in relating strategy is to change corporate culture to suit strategic requirements. This is the optimum choice in the present prevailing Indian business environment which is becoming more and more competitive day-by-day necessitating change in old methods. In fact many companies have failed simply because they were not able to adopt suitable strategies due to corporate cultural constraints. Though cultural change process is slow attempt can be made to change the culture. This transition may be brought by making strategic task explicit, enhancing managerial capability to imbibe changes, arid exhibiting a strong and assertive leadership. )

Values and Strategy: Values of individuals, particularly those of key strategists, have major impact on strategy of the, organisation. While terminal values shape organisational strategies, instrumental values indicate how these strategies are to be implemented. Depending on the dominance of terminal values in strategists, these are means for organisational transformation. Let us see how this happens