Business Culture and Values

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Table of Contents

Are Values Innate or Learned?
Case of Nike
Case of Toyota
Are Values Culture Specific?
Reference List

Are Values Innate or Learned?

For organizations, which are in the international business domain, need to have effective business values. The values, which are internal such as responsiveness, creativity, or innovation, and external such as standardization or resourcefulness, are important from an organization point of view (Smith & Lyles, 2011).

Good values whether they are extrinsic or inherited lead to successful results for organizations. For this reason organizations adopt some values from outside via learning and some from inheritance in order to make the organizations system effective and deliberate (Smith & Lyles, 2011).

According to Duncan and Weiss (1979), learning is part of the organizational system (Smith & Lyles, 2011). When organizations evolve, they adopt new values to make their systems efficient. This is to increase the strength of the system, which already has some pre-existed values “inherited ones” and it requires outer learned values to make the system prolong and sustain (Smith & Lyles, 2011).

Time plays a vital role in the learning process as organizations learn over a period of time and adjust to new values or remove older values in respect of time. Learning curves decide how much adjustment is required and what innate values can be important in the near future. Hence, with asserted facts it can be said that some organizational values are innate and some are learned in order to make the system operate proactive and competitive (Smith & Lyles, 2011).

Intelligent organizations always consider both values, inherited and adopted. They know that to progress in the international business domain they need to have a competitive business advantage, which is attained by adjusting new values in the system.

The upbringing of individuals plays an important role in shaping their morality and values, which helps them in setting up their behaviors and trends. During a period of childhood, an individual learns morality and behaviors and try to imitate or copy them. When the same individual enters into his or her teenage the morality converts into values, which overtime become his or her beliefs.

During teenage, individuals try to fit in their values with respect to their lifestyles, which shape up their different nature and personalities. Therefore, a person is always in a transformational phase and will change according to the routine environment surrounding him or her. The environment may be referred to families, friends, relatives, and neighbors that have a huge role to play in the development of an individual (Smith & Lyles, 2011).

Case of Nike

Nike, a pioneer in the shoe wear industry, has gone through dramatic change and adaptation of values. The accusation of child labor for producing soccer balls in Pakistan was one of the learning experiences for Nike.

The values of corporate social responsibility and labor rights were all ignored in some way by Nike’s administration in Pakistan (Azam, 1999). It was all because of the organization’s inherited trends, which emphasized on generating more business and profits rather than on social norms and ethics. In light of the threat of getting prosecuted by WTO (World Trade Organization), Nike redesigned its administration tactics in Pakistan (Azam, 1999).

The company worked on the CSR codes and also to improve its business functions to minimize child labor activity in its production. To avoid the prosecution Nike contracted with local suppliers to shift its responsibility to others. Hence, by considering Nike’s practical example it can be said that organizations inherit certain vales, but adopt new values to survive in the international business system (Azam, 1999).

Case of Toyota

Toyota Motor Corporation, an internationally recognized automotive firm, can be taken as the best example of vital inheritance (Toyota , 2012). The Japanese trade mark “Toyota” inherited its JIT norms and principles. Purchasing sustainable parts, vitalizing resources, and minimizing waste became cultural values at Toyota as an outcome of the adoption of Just in Time technique.

In relation to JIT, Toyota also learned some norms from outside. Engineering values like “Six Sigma” and “Defect Free Production “were attained by from another multinational corporation “Motorola” (Toyota , 2012). This was to make Toyota a leading firm and trade mark in quality production and distribution (Toyota , 2012).

Are Values Culture Specific?

There has been an increased awareness around the world among companies, which are operating internationally, that there is no single set of cultural specific values that exist in organizations. Due to the interaction of businesses globally cultural values are considered as of immense importance.

To target their customers effectively, companies maintain their internal cultures according to the specific country’s environment so they could make a positive impression. Therefore, business practices are also aimed at satisfying their customers’ culture specific needs, which allow consumers to fully trust their selected companies (Jordan, 2001).

Cultural values are a significant element in the conduct of a company’s business, and specific training is provided to staff for learning those values. For example, the business culture of Virgin Airlines motivates its employees to come up with new ideas for the business. Employees get recognition in the company and are promoted based on the selection of their idea for implementation. IBM has dedicated a room in each of the company’s offices for employees to brainstorm and come up with creative business ideas.

Similarly, Toyota inherited its business value since its beginning for quality management and Just-in-time inventory. Therefore, companies mainly learn from different environmental values, social setups and trends, and they blend in a particular environment. However, companies like Toyota stick with their own beliefs and norms, and eventually, make their standards accordingly (Taylor, 2005).

In case of individual values, these are naturally learned in an environment, which can be considered as innate or inherited. It is, therefore, imperative that an individual will adopt behaviors and perform his or her everyday life’s routine according to beliefs, which have been learnt from the environment by observing others. These values are embedded in an individual that become difficult to change.

However, these are mostly obtained through observations and learning, and by regularly following trends, which become part of their daily life. For example, Hispanics are a group of people who are more spiritual and have firm belief in their religion. Therefore, they have values to transfer their spiritual knowledge and belief to their children. They perform everyday life work according to their spiritual beliefs, and even their treatment of diseases is carried out on the basis of their religion.

Problems can be created if companies do not adopt the culture and values of the environment (Smith & Lyles, 2011). The attitude of a company that says, ‘if a trend is working in one country would work in another’ is a prime example for a company not learning from its environment and has its own trends that are being influenced in a country (Taylor, 2005).

For example, Apple Inc is a company that has their own cultural specific values, which are apparent through their products and can be considered as standardized. However, the company is a success, but it has failed to make an impression culturally on different countries (Taylor, 2005).

Reference List

Azam, F. (1999). TED Case Studies. Web.

Jordan, R. (2001). International Organizations: A Comparative Approach to the Management of Cooperation. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Smith, M., & Lyles, M. (2011). Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management. Boston: John Wiley & Sons.

Taylor, P. (2005). International Organization in the Age of Globalization. New York: 2005.

Toyota . (2012). Toyota Production System. Web.

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