Introduction

Managers are facing increasing demands in looking for strategic advantage and ideally a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. As shown in Chapter 1, each of the elements of human capital strategy is critical for strategy execution. Of these elements, organisation culture has a tremendous impact on the ability to sustain competitive advantage.

Culture is a critical element in business success, as noted by Kotter and Heskett in their research on corporate culture and performance. Companies with adaptive, high-achieving cultures will positively influence the bottom line. For those firms with culture aligned to their business strategy, the performance is quite remarkable as they achieved: more than 4 times revenue growth, over 700 times the net income growth, and a 9 times stock price increase relative to other companies in the same period. While there are many factors that contribute to business performance, culture plays a key role in supporting the business plans and is a key lever in the human capital strategy of the organisation. Research has also shown that distinct culture types have an impact on employee attitudes which impact performance.