Written for a wide audience of practitioners, this book is a valuable addition to the literature on corporate culture and strategic change. It addresses two important issues that have largely been ignored. First, it focuses on organizational culture at the micro-level, and second, it provides reasons and methodologies for aligning organizational subcultures.
All three authors are management professors who have spent their careers focusing on human resources development generally and organizational subcultures specifically. They argue that organizations are comprised of subgroups that possess distinct cultures. It's crucial for organizations to align their subcultures with the organization's dominant culture in order to maintain a competitive edge.
The authors build their case carefully. They begin by introducing the reader to sources of competitive advantage and demonstrate how corporate culture is an important but often overlooked source of competitiveness. In one chapter, they identify types of companies that should be most concerned with subcultural alignment; they also identify individuals within these companies who should be responsible for achieving alignment. The next five chapters provide a conceptual understanding and rationale for aligning organizational subcultures and identify elements of this model of strategic change. In these chapters, the authors define corporate culture and its various forms, explain the relationship between corporate culture and organizational performance, and analyze several types of corporate cultures, such as ethnic, racial, generational, and gender-based.
Fortunately, the book is not entirely theoretical. The final five chapters address practical issues that managers may use as a framework to lead their organizations toward subcultural alignment. The authors suggest approaches for diagnosing corporate culture alignment, assessing strategic vision, confirming corporate values, and communicating and building commitment to vision and values. They deliver a nice mix of abstract theory and concrete examples so that readers can confidently apply these principles to their own organizations.