Over the past century, higher education in the United States has developed an increasingly powerful corporate ethos, as institutions compete for students, faculty, and funding. This book examines how the liberal democratic principles driving higher education often conflict with market pressures to credential students and offer knowledge that has a clear exchange value. Eric Gould, who has been both academician and college administrator, argues that the failure to structure the curriculum so that it integrates responsible social idealism and humanism with economic and cultural needs constitutes the moral crisis of the university. Gould analyzes the economics and politics of higher education, showing how student consumerism, culture wars, faculty alienation, trustee activism, and a split between the concepts of "culture" and "society" have all resulted from the unholy alliance between pragmatism, corporatism, and liberalism in higher education. He asserts that what is needed is a general education for undergraduates that promotes the ability to critique power relations (including those within higher education) so that students can understand how social forces--and their embodiment of ideas, ideologies, and claims for truth--shape contemporary public philosophy.

Organizational culture is a quiet, but driving, influence on our perception of a company, whether as a consumer or as an employee. For instance, we know Southwest Airlines as laid back and friendly. We think of Google as innovative. To almost every well-known company we can assign a character. It is now well recognized that corporate culture has a significant impact on organizational health and performance. Yet, the concept of corporate culture and culture management is too often tantalizingly elusive. In this book, Flamholtz and Randle define culture, identifying and explaining the five key dimensions that determine it: a customer orientation; a people orientation; a process orientation; strong standards of performance and accountability; innovation and openness to change. They explain why culture is a critical factor in organizational success and failure—a key determinant of financial performance. Then, they provide a theoretically sound, highly practical, and field-tested method for managing corporate culture—presenting a set of international and domestic cases that show how actual companies have leveraged culture as the ultimate source of sustainable competitive advantage. In addition to well-known companies such as Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, American Express, IBM, and Toyota, the text presents lesser known culture stars, such as Smartmatic and Infogix. While other titles on culture have focused too heavily on the organization as a psychological being, or on academic studies of culture as a business lever, Corporate Culture draws on empirics to present a go-to, must-read guide for leveraging corporate culture as a source of competitive advantage and as a means of impacting the bottom line.

How corporate culture affects a company's long-term success Today, more and more managers are learning that an organization's culture matters, and are, therefore, putting greater emphasis improving their company culture. The Economist's Organization Culture: Getting It Right can help. In Organization Culture, Naomi Stanford provides a road map for managers who want to: understand the power corporate culture has on a company's success; understand, define, position, and measure their organization's culture; avoid the common and costly mistakes of "culture change" programmes; and, keep their culture dynamic, responsive and resourceful. The book Provides case studies on the business culture of companies like Google, IKEA, eBay, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and Lehman Brothers Describes cultural patterns within organizations, and offers useful exercises on shaping a positive corporate culture Other titles by Stanford: Guide to Organization Design: Creating High-Performing and Adaptable Enterprises Organization Culture addresses all facets of company culture, offering managers commonsense, practical, realistic and pragmatic approaches that will help them improve all aspects of how they do business, regardless of the type of business they're in.

The contribution of culture to organizational performance is substantial and quantifiable. In The Culture Cycle, renowned thought leader James Heskett demonstrates how an effective culture can account for 20-30% of the differential in performance compared with "culturally unremarkable" competitors. Drawing on decades of field research and dozens of case studies, Heskett introduces a powerful conceptual framework for managing culture, and shows it at work in a real-world setting. Heskett's "culture cycle" identifies cause-and-effect relationships that are crucial to shaping effective cultures, and demonstrates how to calculate culture's economic value through "Four Rs": referrals, retention, returns to labor, and relationships. This book: Explains how culture evolves, can be shaped and sustained, and serve as the organization's "internal brand." Shows how culture can promote innovation and survival in tough times. Guides leaders in linking culture to strategy and managing forces that challenge it. Shows how to credibly quantify culture's impact on performance, productivity, and profits. Clarifies culture's unique role in mission-driven organizations. A follow-up to the classic Corporate Culture and Performance (authored by Heskett and John Kotter), this is the next indispensable book on organizational culture. "Heskett (emer., Harvard Business School) provides an exhaustive examination of corporate policies, practices, and behaviors in organizations." Summing Up: Recommended. Reprinted with permission from CHOICE, copyright by the American Library Association.

This work tackles the question of how to create a corporate culture that matches the new.com business strategy. It provides a practical roadmap of strategies to shift an organization's culture from a liability to a competitive advantage in the .com world.

Going far beyond previous empirical work, John Kotter and James Heskett provide the first comprehensive critical analysis of how the "culture" of a corporation powerfully influences its economic performance, for better or for worse. Through painstaking research at such firms as Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, ICI, Nissan, and First Chicago, as well as a quantitative study of the relationship between culture and performance in more than 200 companies, the authors describe how shared values and unwritten rules can profoundly enhance economic success or, conversely, lead to failure to adapt to changing markets and environments. With penetrating insight, Kotter and Heskett trace the roots of both healthy and unhealthy cultures, demonstrating how easily the latter emerge, especially in firms which have experienced much past success. Challenging the widely held belief that "strong" corporate cultures create excellent business performance, Kotter and Heskett show that while many shared values and institutionalized practices can promote good performances in some instances, those cultures can also be characterized by arrogance, inward focus, and bureaucracy -- features that undermine an organization's ability to adapt to change. They also show that even "contextually or strategically appropriate" cultures -- ones that fit a firm's strategy and business context -- will not promote excellent performance over long periods of time unless they facilitate the adoption of strategies and practices that continuously respond to changing markets and new competitive environments. Fundamental to the process of reversing unhealthy cultures and making them more adaptive, the authors assert, is effective leadership. At the heart of this groundbreaking book, Kotter and Heskett describe how executives in ten corporations established new visions, aligned and motivated their managers to provide leadership to serve their customers, employees, and stockholders, and thus created more externally focused and responsive cultures.

Studies have shown that 60% of male managers feel uncomfortable working one-on-one with their female colleagues. That's where The Man's Guide to Corporate Culture comes in. Heather Zumarraga, a business journalist who has spent much of her career in testosterone-filled work environments, wants to make sure that any male leader who wants to be part of the solution knows how to do it the right way. Heather provides you with logical solutions to complex gender issues and gives important, practical lessons for men and women alike. The Man's Guide to Corporate Culture teaches you: Which behaviors to adopt (and which to avoid) to create and maintain a comfortable work environment for their female co-workers. How to create an environment that is not only welcoming to both women and men but also encourages healthy and respectful collaboration. And more real-world tested advice and approaches to help ensure every employee (and business) is best situated for success. There are numerous business books that coach women to deal with bias and harassment in a male-dominated workplace. However, The Man's Guide to Corporate Culture is?one of the only books that coaches men on how to succeed?in the new normal.

By the early twenty-first century, Americans had embraced a holistic vision of work, that one's job should be imbued with meaning and purpose, that business should serve not only stockholders but also the common good, and that, for many, should attend to the “spiritual” health of individuals and society alike. While many voices celebrate efforts to introduce “spirituality in the workplace” as a recent innovation that holds the potential to positively transform business and the American workplace, James Dennis LoRusso argues that workplace spirituality is in fact more closely aligned with neoliberal ideologies that serve the interests of private wealth and undermine the power of working people. LoRusso traces how this new moral language of business emerged as part of the larger shift away from the post-New Deal welfare state towards today's global market-oriented social order. Building on other studies that emphasize the link between American religious conservatism and the rise of global capitalism, LoRusso shows how progressive “spirituality” remains a vital part of this story as well. Drawing on cultural history as well as case studies from New York City and San Francisco of businesses and leading advocates of workplace spirituality, this book argues that religion reveals much about work, corporate culture, and business in contemporary America.

Research in cognitive science over the last 30 years shows much of what we know about culture in the business world is based on myth, wishful thinking, outdated science, or is just plain wrong. This is why culture-shaping and change programs in organizations often amount to little more than sloganeering with minimal impact on the lived experience of employees. This book bridges the gap between the latest research on cognitive science and culture, providing a valuable guide for change leaders, CEOs, and practitioners on how to sustainably work with and change this important resource. It answers many of the major questions that have plagued culture work, such as: Why so many CEOs and management consultants preach culture change when so few culture interventions actually succeed Why CEOs persist in believing "culture starts at the top" when virtually no research in anthropology supports that claim Why most culture shaping approaches have no answer for how to affect culture in global companies Why culture doesn’t cause us to do anything, yet we persist in believing that somehow it does Why so many culture-shaping projects focus on corporate values despite the fact modern science shows why changing personal values is exceedingly difficult What we are learning about culture from the last 30 years of cognitive science gives us the foundation for far more impactful and sustainable interventions than have been possible to date. This book explains why, showing how everyday business practices well beyond HR are key to culture change. Why? Because the brain’s synaptic plasticity can only be altered through new sustained and widespread organizational habits and routines. This groundbreaking, practical guide will show you finally how to realize the full power of culture as a transformational, empowering, and competitive resource.