ABSTRACT
Th e most challenging part of workforce management is building and sustaining an eff ective corporate culture. Culture is often powerful, and it persists when you try to alter it. Th e key point to remember is that corporate cultures are alive. Like suprahuman organisms, they have their own energy, purpose, direction, values and ways of processing information. Th ose who believe that cultures can be shaped like clay are in for a surprise. If you attempt to change cultures in a way that violates their sense of order, they will lash back at you. It is a bit like punching a Bobo Doll. It returns to its equilibrium point following any disturbance-and may punch you back! Edgar Schein of MIT has given us what is probably the best defi nition of corporate culture:
A pattern of assumptions, invented, discovered or developed by a given group, as it learns to cope with the problem of external adaptation and internal integration , that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and be taught to new members, as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to these problems.
