Organizational culture and its impacts on the formation of business strategies

Abstract

In a context marked by constant and necessary innovations, this research aims at investigating the influence of the organizational culture on the business strategies implementation process of two steelmaking companies. To achieve that, the literature review explored two main themes: culture, considering values, beliefs, expectations, customs, rules and group procedures, objectives and strategies, technologies and operational practices, personnel policies and guidelines, affective relations hips, people’s actions and perceptions; and the strategic actions regarding competition, collaboration, organizations’ diversification and growth. The case-study methodology was used, with a qualitative approach, and was based on semi-structured interviews with middle managers from the two companies, located in Rio de Janeiro State. The research’s results suggest that organizational culture directly influences the process of  creating organizational strategies. This influence comes, especially, from the following characteristics found in the companies organizational environments: (i) presence of a main value (high quality of the services); (ii) strong social interaction between employees; (iii) strategy seen as a collective perspective; (iv) uniform thinking and behaving.  As for the typical “not invented here” syndrome  and “strategies stability (resistance to change)”, they could not be found in the organizational environments studied.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2023.006-116