Context, Conditions, and Culture

CONTEXT MATTERS WHEN assessing a culture’s strategic effectiveness. Leaders must simultaneously consider culture styles and key organizational and market conditions if they want their culture to help drive performance. Region and industry are among the most germane external factors to keep in mind; critical internal considerations include alignment with strategy, leadership, and organizational design. Region. The values of the national and regional cultures in which a company is embedded can influence patterns of behavior within the organization. (This linkage has been explored in depth by Geert Hofstede and the authors of the GLOBE study.) We find, for example, that companies operating in countries characterized by a high degree of institutional collectivism (defined as valuing equity within groups and encouraging the collective distribution of resources), such as France and Brazil, have cultures that…