Why do companies need corporate culture?

Every company has its own corporate culture, which seems to have become a default rule: companies must have their own corporate culture.

But when you ask the managers of the company why the company needs to establish a corporate culture, I'm afraid not every manager can make it clear. Some people just follow the crowd. After all, other companies have corporate culture, so our company must also have it, so we found some words of "superior" as the corporate culture of the company. But this obviously failed to achieve the purpose of establishing corporate culture.

Today's article will talk about why companies need corporate culture.

1. What is the function of religion?

First of all, before talking about corporate culture, I want to start with the topic of religion. I wonder if you have ever thought about this question: why does religion appear in this world? Personally, I am an atheist and never believe in religion. In the past, I always wondered why this "deceptive" trick of religion could exist in the world for tens of thousands of years and last forever. Even after mankind entered the modern society, countless people still believe in religion.

In fact, religion certainly has its great significance. We know that the most important upgrading process of human society from primitive to prosperous is the continuous growth of ethnic population, thus achieving a more detailed division of labor and cooperation. There will be some problems in this process, because according to the Dunbar number, the number of people who can have a stable social network by intelligence is about 150.

When the number of people in the ethnic group is more than or even much larger than 150, it is impossible for the elders of the ethnic group to communicate with everyone in the tribe and convey their ideas to everyone through direct communication, because the elders cannot cope. And hierarchical management will increase the distortion of information transmission.

In this way, it is difficult for the core managers of ethnic groups to maintain absolute ideological control over the whole ethnic group. At this time, religion just came into being.

After the birth of religion, elders don't need to communicate with everyone in the ethnic group one-on-one. They only need to create a religion so that everyone can believe in it, and the limit of Dunbar number 150 no longer exists, because the number of people that religion can contact is theoretically infinite, thus realizing the transformation from "one-to-one" to "one-to-many".

Second, why does the company need corporate culture?

Back to the topic, why do companies need corporate culture? In fact, the reason is similar to religion, because company managers need everyone in the company to believe in the same values. Without corporate culture, companies with a large number of employees may need to convey their values at multiple levels, because there is a "Dunbar number", that is, the general manager conveys values to the directors, the directors convey values to the managers, and the managers convey values to the employees. ...

However, we know that the transmission of information will be distorted, and its original intention will be misinterpreted with the continuous increase of information transmission. The best way to solve this problem is to establish the corporate culture of the company, so that the corporate culture can be directly passed on to every employee.

In addition, corporate culture is also a criterion to assist employees' behavior. In a company where all employees believe in its corporate culture, when employees encounter a dilemma: for example, on the one hand, the interests of the company will be harmed, on the other hand, the interests of customers will also be harmed. If the company's corporate culture has "customer first", then employees will understand what to choose.

Therefore, for the company, corporate culture is not what some people think, it is completely vain and pretentious. Only a company that can truly put corporate culture on the ground and produce results can grasp the essence.