APPROPRIATE CULTURES

It could be argued that a ‘good’ culture exerts a positive influence on organizational behaviour. It could help to create a ‘high-performance’ culture, one that will produce a high level of business performance. As described by Furnham and Gunter (1993), ‘a good culture is consistent in its components and shared amongst organizational members, and it makes the organization unique, thus differentiating it from other organizations’.

However, a high-performance culture means little more than any culture that will produce a high level of business performance. The attributes of cultures vary tremendously by context. The qualities of a high-performance culture for an established retail chain, a growing service business and a consumer products company that is losing market share may be very different. Further, in addition to context differences, all cultures evolve over time. Cultures that are ‘good’ in one set of circumstances or period of time may be dysfunctional in different circumstances or different times.


Because culture is developed and manifests itself in different ways in different organizations, it is not possible to say that one culture is better than another, only that it is dissimilar in certain ways. There is no such thing as an ideal culture, only an appropriate culture. This means that there can be no universal prescription for managing culture, although there are certain approaches that can be helpful, as described in the next section.