As Walmart grew into the world's largest retailer, its staff were subjected to a long list of dos and don'ts covering every aspect of their work. Now the firm has decided that its rules-based culture is too inflexible to cope with the challenge of globalization and technological change, and is trying to instill a values-based culture in which employees can be trusted to do the right things because they know what firm stands for.
Values is the latest hot topic in management thinking. Pepsico has started preaching a creed of performance with purpose. Nearly every big firm claims to be building a more caring and ethical culture.
A new study suggests there is less to this than it says on the label. Commissioned by Dov, the author of How, a book arguing that the way firms do matters as much as what they do, and conducted by the Boston Research Group, the National Governance, Culture and Leadership Assessment is based on a survey of thousands of American employees, from every rung of the the corporate ladder.
