The character of a corporation : how your company's culture can make or break your business

Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike, and Hewlett-Packard all have it: a positive corporate culture that powerfully affects their bottom line. Yet corporate culture remains the most underutilized weapon in business because most companies are intimidated by its intangibility, convinced of its secondary importance to the "harder" components of their strategic plans, or simply don't know how to assess culture or fix it. Drawing on 15 years of research and consulting with high-profile companies, The Character of a Corporation explores how a company's "character" can make the difference between short-term burnout and a sustainable long-term edge and how anyone, from senior-level executive to middle manager, can identify and thrive within their company's culture. "In The Character of a Corporation Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones draw on fifteen years of research and consulting with high-profile companies such as Unilever, Polygram, Heineken, and Johnson & Johnson to present a powerful methodology for assessing and transforming one's corporate culture. Utilizing two well-established sociological concepts - sociability and solidarity - to explore the yin and yang of human dynamics within corporations, Goffee and Jones have created a highly original, fully functional framework by which to better understand corporate culture. The Character of a Corporation successfully quantifies the notoriously amorphous concept of culture, distilling it into a diagnostic test that managers can use to identify which of four (networked, mercenary, fragmented, communal) basic cultural forms prevail within their department, team, or organization." "Offering substantive analysis, vivid examples, and pragmatic solutions, The Character of a Corporation explores how a company's character can make the difference between short-term burnout and a sustainable long-term edge."--Jacket A unique and insightful exploration of the importance of a corporation's "character," based on years of research and consultations with high-profile companies, shows how a positive corporate culture can powerfully affect long-term corporate success. Tour.