Strategy and Practice 2 - Corporate Character
Contents |
Main Points
- Branding Strategy has some similarities with Strategy as Ethos except Ethos is more individualized
- Corporate Charracter has become a key element in Sustainable Competitive Advantage in 21st Century
- Corporate Character is an aggregate of distinctive features and is connected to human aspects of character
- HP's Character - US (Individualism), West Coast(laid back), Enterpreneurial(Started in garage) long established as an innovator
Levels and Frameworks of Strategy and Ethos
- "National / Regional"...........Porter's Diamond of National Advantage....Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions
- "Organisational Culture"......McKinsey's 7's......Johnson & Scholes' Cultural Web...Peters & Waterman In Search of Excellence
- "Individual Identity"
An organization can draw from all of those. HP is an company in the US in Silcon valley in the IT Industry which has been a organizational reputation starting with a garage
Summary
- Understand organisation's inimitable character
- Runs so deep thst you need to avoid using it mechanistically
- Must be authentic.
Strategy as Ethos
- Overuse of Best Practice can led to a loss of collective Competitive Advantage amongst firms. In classical terms firms can. See Cummings Angwin The Future Shape of Strategy. Best Practice can even diminish organization's Ethos. Ie the The New Zealand Police Force mission statement
- Compete on price
- Rely on tacit knowledge
- Do something that is not readily reproduced
- Ethos is difficult to replicate and becuase of its organic and emergent nature, dependency on history it can be difficult to replicate
- Thinking of companies as individuals with human characteristics is viable so long as it is authentic and consistent. Car are now sold on their characters not functions. BP's beyond petroleum was not authentic they were not Greenpeace and only 1% of revenue did not come from petroleum
- Two basic approaches to ethics
- Codes of behaviour - Deontic - moral, codified, charters, stakeholders, profit maximization, economic efficiency
- Forms of stratification - Aretaic - Individual telos (Purpose), virtuous by living life to the full and being true to oneself, (eudaimon) acting according to ones abilities and disposition, acting within the community and not against it (deportment) know what the two vices (too ponderous or too rash) and knowing either side of the good action. Aristotle believed that "good" had many interpretations not just one.
Ethos Driven Strategy
Three Anecdotes Aristotle's Individual Mean Four Folds of Subjectification Circle of Corporate Ethos
Stakeholder Theory can limit the Organization's Ethos. e.g Johnson & Johnson credo is focused on doing 'good things' but when their capsules were tainted they did not replace their capsules with smooth caplets. Maybe this was because of their investment in the technology. Was their final responsibility to the shareholders and not those identified in their credo?
Codes - They can be either too detailed and cover all eventualities and become too complex (New Zealand Police Force) or too short to become meaningless. Also just having a code isnt good enough it must be authentic and realistic
Therefore - Primeaux and Steiber argue that codes should only be assessed in economic terms of profit maximization and efficiency - the business should therefore be ethically neutral
But if you try and develop a characteristic it is must be authentic
Therefore the best approach is develop an inside-out Aretaic appreciation with a deontic outside-in set of codes
Application: E.g. If a company tried to personify itself as a person it might choose Michael Palin - British, ethical, open to outside cultures. They might decide they wanted to evolve it to include Palin's children. - A bit more dynamic with it
The more individualized Aretic approach is more about being distinctive, eschewing Best Practice and developing your own identity. A Jaguar car has its own identity and has not be subsumed in blandness of
Summary
- Previous approaches believed that there was a general sense on angelic goodness to aim for
- Dont through away the deontic approach but add it to the aretaic
- If Ethos is about exploring the inside out then the onus falls on the people in the organization - they are the embodiment
