| Good morning everyone. |
| Now whether you're going to university to study business or some other subject, |
| many of you will eventually end up working for a company of some kind. |
| Now, when you first start working somewhere you will realise that the organisation you've joined has certain characteristics. |
| And we often refer to these social characteristics as the culture of the organisation. |
| This includes its unwritten ideas, beliefs, values and things like that. |
| One well known writer has classified company cultures by identifying four major types. |
| The first type is called the Power Culture, |
| and it's usually found in small organisations. |
| It's the type of culture that needs a central source of power to be effective, |
| and because control is in the hands of just one or two people, |
| there aren't many rules or procedures. |
| Another characteristic is that communication usually takes the form of conversations |
| rather than, say, formal meetings or written memos. |
| Now one of the benefits of this culture is that the organisation has the ability to act quickly, |
| so it responds well to threat, or danger on the one hand, and opportunity on the other. |
| But on the negative side, this type of organisation doesn't always act effectively, |
| because it depends too much on one or two people at the top, |
| and when these people make poor decisions, there's no-one else who can influence them. |
| And the kind of person who does well in this type of business culture is one who is happy to take risks, |
| and for whom job security is a low priority. |
| The next type is known as Role Culture - |
| that's ROLE, not ROLL, by the way, |
| and this type is usually found in large companies, |
| which have lots of different levels in them. |
| These organisations usually have separate departments |
| that specialise in things like finance, or sales, or maintenance, or whatever. |
| Each one is co-ordinated at the top by a small group of senior managers, |
| and typically everyone's job is controlled by sets of rules and procedures. |
| For example, there are specific job descriptions, rules for discipline, and so on. |
| What are the benefits of this kind of culture? |
| Well firstly, because it's found in large organisations, |
| its fixed costs, or overheads as they're known, are low in relation to its output, or what it produces. |
| In other words it can achieve economies of scale. |
| And secondly, it is particularly successful in business markets where technical expertise is important. |
| On the other hand, this culture is often very slow to recognise the need for change, |
| and even slower to react. |
| What kind of person does this type of culture suit? |
| Well, it suits employees who value security, |
| and who don't particularly want to have responsibility. |
| Moving on now to Task Cultures. |
| This type is found in organisations that are project-oriented. |
| You usually find it where the market for the company's product is extremely competitive, |
| or where the products themselves have a short life-span. |
| Usually top management delegates the projects, the people and other resources. |
| And once these have been allocated, little day-to-day control is exercised from the top, |
| because this would seem like breaking the rules'. |
| Now one of the major benefits of this culture is that it's flexible. |
| But it does have some major disadvantages too. |
| For instance, it can't produce economies of scale or great depth of expertise. |
| People who like working in groups or teams prefer this type of culture. |
| And finally, the fourth category is called the Person Culture... |