PEOPLE.IDEAS.PERFORMANCE

66 national economic policy. Productivity has increased nearly twenty-fold. Profits have risen ten-fold. And we have had periods of up to fourteen months in which not one worker has left us. We have a backlog of more than 2,000 job applications, hundreds from people who state that they would take any job just to be at Semco. In a poll of recent college graduates conducted by a leading Brazilian magazine, 25% of the men and 13% of the women said Semco was the company at which they most wanted to work. Not long ago the wife of one of our workers came to see a member of our human resources staff. She was puzzled about her husband's behavior. He was not his usual grumpy autocratic self. The woman was worried. What, she wondered, were we doing to her husband? We realised that as Semco had changed for the better, he had too ” . %HW <RXU &RPSDQ\ In Bet Your Company, the culture is one in which decisions are high risk but employees may wait years before they know whether their actions actually paid off. Pharmaceutical companies are an example of this culture, as are oil and gas companies, architectural firms and organizations in other large, capital-intensive industries. Increasingly, large technology and IT services organizations now fall into this category. Because the need to make the right decision is so great, the cultural elements evolve such that values are long-term focused and there is a collective belief in the need to plan, prepare and perform due diligence at all stages of decision making. 3URFHVV In the process culture, feedback is slow, and the risks are low. Large retailers, banks, insurance companies and government organizations are typically in this group. No single transaction has much impact on the organization’s success and it can take months or years to find out whether a decision was good or bad. Because of the lack of immediate feedback, employees find it very difficult to measure ZKDW they do so they focus instead on how they do things. Technical excellence is often valued here and employees will pay attention to getting the process and the details right without necessarily measuring the actual outcome. Handy (2011) and Harrison (1978) defined culture from the point of view of the crucial behavioral aspects of power, legitimacy, occupations and relationships in organizations. Handy and Harrison defined four archetypes as follows: 3RZHU FXOWXUH There are some organizations where the power remains in the hands of only few people and only they are authorized to take decisions. They are the ones who enjoy special privileges at the workplace. They are the most important people at the workplace and are the major decision makers. These individuals further delegate responsibilities to the other employees. In such a culture the subordinates have no option but to strictly follow their superior’s instructions. In the worst kinds of power cultures the employees do not have the liberty to express their views or share their ideas on an open forum and have to follow what their superior says. The managers in such a type of culture sometimes can be partial to someone or the other leading to major unrest among others.