Part A-General
Why do people behave in the same way? Do they share beliefs and values? Perhaps our minds shaped our actions, and when people spoke the same language and did things the same, they formed a culture. Different cultures can be found in countries, businesses and communities.
We grow and hold on to the values of national culture such as certainty and uncertainty, risk taking and risk aversion, good and evil, and gradually change over time. Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist, has identified six aspects of national culture. It is distance of power, avoidance of uncertainty, individualism, masculinity, long-term orientation, and indulgence and restraint. Dimension scores vary by country. Power distances are high in Latin, Asian and African countries and low in German, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries. Latin and Germanic countries and Japan have high avoidance of uncertainty. China, Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon countries are embracing more uncertainty.
Corporate culture, on the other hand, consists of dress code, systems, and “cultural careers” such as founders, CEOs, and managers. Corporate practices are developed and learned from work to achieve their mission and goals. What’s more, individuals can move from company to company. Therefore, they are more superficial and adaptable than the core values of the culture of those countries. According to Hofstede, national culture belongs to anthropology. Organizational culture to sociology. Within a large company, different departments can even collaborate with different individuals to show different cultures.
Can corporate culture weaken national culture? Especially in multinational corporations (MNCs), conflicts are certain to occur due to cultural differences between the local culture and the imported corporate culture. Taking the Middle Eastern multinational company as an example, local workers do not stay up late to complete their work if they have family obligations. This does not mean he is an irresponsible employee. However, Western executives may perceive their work as if they don’t care and disagree. INSEAD professor André Laurent found that cultural differences between managers from different countries working within the same MNC are significantly greater than those between managers working in their own companies. In a typical multinational corporation, Germans became Germans, Americans became Americans, and Swedes became Swedes. If you don’t understand the explanation very well, your employees may not be adapted to the national culture, or they may not be adapted to the shared corporate culture. There is also a general tendency for workers who do not fit into the corporate culture to be hired in the first place or to resign within a few years.
Corporate culture is not defined in one day, but evolves and becomes more visible over time. Almost all successful companies have developed a strong and positive culture based on leadership and empowerment, as well as management and management. For example, Toyota introduced the “Toyota Way,” a clear dedication to teamwork and continuous improvement (“Kaizen”) gave it a competitive advantage, and many companies learned from them. A strong and clear corporate culture allows companies to enjoy many benefits, including maintaining similar standards, increasing loyalty, increasing motivation and productivity, and increasing control over management.
How do leaders create a corporate culture? At the start of a business, founders play an important role in setting standards from their beliefs, values and assumptions. However, as you begin to attract new members to management, more learning experiences will be shared and new beliefs, values and assumptions will be inherited. As more and more people join the company, there is an increasing need for CEOs to create shared visions, norms of practice, and the same level of risk taking. Unfortunately, culture does not survive when a major “cultural career” leaves or most of its members leave. Individualism is important in the United States, and companies have similar value. Therefore, corporate culture may reflect the characteristics of founders such as GE’s Jack Welch and Apple’s Steve Jobs. Interestingly, some companies have a long history of maintaining their own culture, no matter who is in top management. IBM is one example.
Part B-Specific (BreadTalk)
BreadTalk is a designer confectionery store founded in 2000 and is best known for its cream-filled bread topped with pork floss. By the third year, BreadTalk Group Limited was listed on SGX. It is one of Singapore’s leading F & B brands, renowned for its creative, innovative and trendy, high quality products. Today, BreadTalk has more than 3,000 bakeries (including franchises), 33 food courts, 8 restaurants and is reaching out to 12 countries with more than 4,000 staff. The brands include BreadTalk, Toast Box, Food Republic, Din Tai Fung and Station Kitchen.
BreadTalk’s vision is to become an international and trend-setting lifestyle brand, whose mission involves new innovative changes and creative differentiation to create passionate and vibrant products. To lead a new lifestyle culture. They believe in providing QSC (Quality, Service, and Cleanliness) to their customers. They treat training as an important aspect of the company. All new trainees must first be trained at a BreadTalk store to learn how to pack bread and serve customers. The training and development department also regularly dispatches headquarters staff for professional development courses. They also have a strong belief in team bonding, and all outlet staff go to the beach or spend an exciting day of team building activities before the new BreadTalk outlets open. With close ties and understanding, staff can work well together.
In addition, BreadTalk Chairman Dr. George Queck encourages all staff to be creative and always be creative. For his company to grow successfully, it is essential to have a team of trusted employees and partners. He allows the manager to make his own decisions. “You can’t travel abroad without authorization. For example, the Chinese market is much larger than Singapore, so managers dispatching there must be empowered to deal with such scale. Hmm. ”The secret to BreadTalk’s success is diligence.
In my opinion, our Singaporean culture (for example, with an emphasis on education, groupism and diligence) plays a role in shaping the BreadTalk corporate culture, especially by local employees. BreadTalk is also clearly shaped by its founder, Dr. Queck. The main difficulty is getting foreign employees to work comfortably in Singapore. I don’t think BreadTalk’s culture is much influenced by other Asian countries such as China, India and Vietnam. But in today’s competitive market, there are clear patterns and characteristics that companies must develop to succeed, such as creativity, innovation, differentiation, training, team building, and autonomy.
In 2008, BreadTalk specially created a bread named “Peace Panda,” and all proceeds from the sale of this bread helped to recover from the Sichuan earthquake. Together with the Red Cross, they raised S $ 40,000 in just one week. The company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) law shows an innovative way to use its products as a tool to raise money by choosing animals from Chinese countries and naming them starting with a “P”. I did. Although CSR is not considered part of the corporate culture, it can leave a deep impression on customers as it provides brand-free media coverage and demonstrates humanity and compassion. It’s like a form of differentiation from other F & B companies. When people support the cause by buying “Peace Pandas”, they will buy other breads as well. Sales also increased.
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