What is corporate culture?

Corporate culture is an objective phenomenon accompanying enterprises. As a sub-culture form of the whole social culture, the development and survival of enterprises can not be separated from the cultivation of corporate culture, which is closely related to the history of enterprise development. With the advent of the era of knowledge economy and the acceleration of the trend of economic and cultural integration, enterprises as economic entities need cultural nourishment and nutrition more than ever before. Economic activities are often the integration of economy and culture, and economic development needs cultural support more than ever before.

Look directly at the essence of corporate culture

An enterprise is an economic organization established in accordance with the law, which is market-oriented and takes profit as its main purpose, and is engaged in commodity production, circulation or service business activities. Culture is the sum of spiritual wealth and material wealth formed in the process of transforming the objective world and the subjective world. In a narrow sense, it refers to social ideology and corresponding institutions and organizations. As an economic culture, corporate culture is very different from other group cultures. It is the most active organizational culture based on market economy and organically combined with the operating mechanism of market economy.

Corporate culture is an organic combination of economy and culture. First of all, it belongs to the category of economics and has the attribute of management. Corporate culture is a modern cultural management science that uses the inherent characteristics and laws of culture to manage enterprises. It also belongs to the category of culturology and has sub-cultural attributes. Enterprise culture is an economic culture influenced and restricted by social culture. As a tributary and subsystem of social culture, it is not only a window to understand the degree of social civilization, but also a growing point of social mainstream culture. Because corporate culture belongs to two categories and has dual attributes, from the philosophical point of view, from the basic principle of the relationship between productive forces and production relations, economic base and superstructure, the economic attribute of corporate culture is the first, which can only be "corporate culture" but not "cultural enterprise". The essential feature of corporate culture is to serve the profitable economic organizations of enterprises, and its economic attributes determine its cultural attributes. Corporate culture is more for the sake of the enterprise.

At the same time, we should also see that an enterprise is not only an economic system composed of capital, technology, organization and personnel, but also a cultural system composed of values, beliefs, principles, enterprise ideas and entrepreneurship. Culture belongs to the superstructure, reflecting the economic base, but it also reacts on the economic base. Corporate culture, as the sum of enterprise's micro-thoughts and behaviors, plays an active role in the economy, playing at least three roles: first, guiding the direction, second, enhancing the motivation, and third, promoting development. It is an inherent requirement for enterprises to attach importance to the role of cultural power in promoting economic power and ideological culture, and it is also a reflection of the law that the economic foundation reform requires the superstructure to adapt to and serve it. For direct economic purposes, corporate culture can carry out cultural innovation for enterprises, transplant, graft and promote cultural factors suitable for enterprise goals and characteristics, that is, strengthen positive factors in the established cultural background and introduce exogenous variables, so as to integrate and generate a vibrant local cultural environment and subculture system, so as to motivate and unite employees, improve labor productivity and pursue maximum benefits. In this way, by strengthening the construction of enterprise culture, organically integrating cultural resources with production and operation practices, promoting the synchronous coordination of enterprise productivity and production relations, maintaining the seamless connection between enterprise development and social progress, realizing the organic combination of economy and culture, and making enterprise culture a coagulant and catalyst for enterprise development.

In today's society, the cultural content and added value of goods and services are getting higher and higher, and cultural factors play an increasingly important role in the development of enterprises and even the whole economy. The economic system and cultural system of enterprises are organically integrated to form economic and cultural integration. As the product of the integration of social culture and organizational management practice, corporate culture has increasingly become the core force to improve the comprehensive competitiveness of enterprises and determine the level of economic development.

Perspective on the misunderstanding of enterprise culture

Generally speaking, there are many defects and mistakes in China's corporate culture, and some misunderstandings have appeared in the process of changing and building corporate culture.

Target positioning error. Some people think that building corporate culture is only a means for enterprises to achieve economic goals, not what enterprises should achieve. As an organization, an enterprise must be the organic unity of economic organizations and social organizations, and its goal should be the unity of the economic goal of making profits and the social goal of creating value for the public. As the product of the organic combination of economy and culture, corporate culture should also be the unity of goals and means to achieve them. Some enterprises aim at building corporate culture to shape employees, including changing employees' ideas, habits and behaviors according to the intentions of leaders and organizations. As far as the connotation of corporate culture is concerned, shaping employees is indeed an important task, but the fundamental aspect of corporate culture is to shape the enterprise itself while promoting the development of employees, and to realize the interaction and mutual promotion between "building enterprises" and "creating people". There is a phenomenon of "cultural ideal" in the cultural construction goals of some enterprises. These enterprises will put forward grand goals such as transforming the world beyond the scope of enterprises, embody their so-called lofty aspirations and historical missions, and lack down-to-earth corporate culture goals.

The misunderstanding of the relationship between subject and object. It is considered that the corporate culture is a top-down culture initiated by leaders or "bosses" and planned, guided and designed by experts. In the construction of corporate culture, employees are only passive recipients, not active participants and creators. The construction of corporate culture in some enterprises often adopts a top-down approach, lacking bottom-up communication, that is, the boss sets an outline, then finds experts to design the corporate culture system, and then publicizes it among all employees. The main body of corporate culture construction here is entrepreneurs, and the object is all employees. It should be noted that corporate culture should be a model of beliefs and expectations shared by all or most members of the enterprise. The cultural accomplishment of enterprise leaders and their understanding of enterprise culture construction play a very important role in the cultural construction of an enterprise, especially in the framework of enterprise core culture. However, corporate culture cannot be equated with entrepreneur culture and "boss culture", but all employees must participate in corporate culture construction, because employees are the main body of corporate culture construction. Only by combining the strategic thinking and leading role of enterprise leaders with the basic and main role of employee participation can we truly create a vibrant corporate culture and truly make excellent corporate culture the spiritual home of enterprise leaders and all employees.

Misunderstandings in content. The content of corporate culture is either pure "enterprise"+"culture", and enterprises are decorated with empty slogans, overwhelming words and gorgeous rhetoric, which leads to the slogan of corporate culture, and some enterprises come in with flashy slogans; Corporate culture is concrete, and some corporate culture construction is often "on paper" or beautifying the appearance of the factory; Corporate culture is empty, and the phenomenon of "packaging" and "hype" is prominent. It follows the wind, puts on airs, and engages in so-called "image advertising" propaganda and bombing. Or simply equivalent to ideological and political work, thinking that corporate culture is to help enterprise party organizations do a good job in the ideological and political work of employees; It is equal to the construction of spiritual civilization, and thinks that the construction of corporate culture is to engage in activities, build models and sing praises; It is equal to the spirit of enterprise, and thinks that the construction of enterprise culture is to summarize a few loud slogans; Equivalent to cultural and sports activities, corporate culture is to organize employees to carry out amateur cultural and sports activities; It is equivalent to CIS (Enterprise Identification System), and holds that corporate culture is the image of packaging enterprises. Either it is so complicated that "corporate culture is a basket, everything can be put in", blindly superstitious about tradition, expecting to put the content of corporate culture construction into traditional management methods and management ideas, or blindly westernize, engage in something new, think that new and foreign are modern, and try to treat corporate culture as a good medicine for "all diseases".

An error in method. There are two wrong tendencies in the construction method of enterprise culture: one is naturalism which lacks theoretical judgment. It is believed that corporate culture, including corporate philosophy, is naturally formed in the long-term production and operation activities of enterprises, and enterprises cannot and should not plan, design and build artificially. The other is a subjectivist tendency lacking empirical analysis. It is believed that corporate culture, including corporate philosophy, is artificially planned and designed according to the intention of corporate leaders. The former leads to the phenomenon of "inaction" in corporate culture construction, and everything goes with the flow, lacking clear concept guidance; The latter leads to formalism and "surprise" in corporate culture construction. Many enterprises blindly imitate other people's corporate culture construction, eager for quick success and instant benefit, mechanically copying, converging and similar, lacking characteristics and individuality. Enterprises can design resounding ideas and slogans overnight, and they can also print exquisite corporate culture handbook. These two tendencies have led to the same result, that is, employees' conceptual cognition of corporate culture is blank, so corporate culture construction is out of the question.