Question

What might the term dysfunctional corporate culture mean? What implications does it have regarding quality?

Answer 1

Dysfunctional Corporate Culture

Culture is a feeling of unity one feels on account of the shared beliefs, customs, habits and nature of people in a particular environment. Corporate culture is thus an important part of an organization as it makes people belong to that group, a place they feel wanted and accepted.

A dysfunctional corporate culture is something which fails to achieve this purpose and employees no longer have a feeling of belonging. It manifests itself in growing tensions between employees, non-participating nature, non-collaboration, high attrition etc.

It also affects the quality of work of employees as humans need a sense of protection and social belonging to achieve their maximum potential. When there's a threat of adverse behavior from fellow workers, humans refuse to collaborate effectively. They also lose the purpose to continue working at a place where they dont feel wanted and may quit frequently, thus increasing attrition. This also affects the output as employees dont give their best to their work

Lets take a reference. Suppose a company X has a great corporate culture. They celebrate birthdays with family, have a regular reward and recognition function and have lunch together. This has continued for decades and there are many employees who have stayed with X for more than 10 years. X has also taken care of them when they needed by providing loans at low-interest rates. However, this company is acquired by another company Y.

Y is a public company with a different culture. There are fixed time promotions and hierarchical organization structure leading to work being done in silos. Although the employees of Y also deliver their best performance, but the culture is different from X's.

When these two companies merge with Y being the driving partner, employees of X will feel dejected as now their corporate culture has become dysfunctional. Many will start leaving and XY will eventually lose out