Types of organizational culture as predictors of corporate social responsibility

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate connections between corporate social responsibility and organizational culture types. The survey was conducted in Estonian, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Czech, Finnish, German and Slovakian electric-electronic machine, retail store and machine-building enterprises. The main aim of the study is to find connections between corporate social responsibility and different organizational culture types. According to Cameron and Quinn (1998), culture defines the core values, assumptions, interpretations and approaches that characterise an organization. Competing Values Framework is extremely useful in helping to organize and interpret a wide variety of organizational phenomena. The four dominant culture types - hierarchy, market, clan and adhocracy emerge from the framework. According to Strautmanis (2007), social responsibility is part of organizational culture and a value in the organizational culture environment. Development of social responsibility is a change in values orientation, whose task is shaping the attitudes, transformation of the personal position so that it matches individual and public interests. Different organizations have framed different definitions about corporate social responsibility - although there is considerable common ground between them. Nowadays corporate social responsibility is an integral part of the business vocabulary and is regarded as a crucially important issue in management (Cornelius et al., 2008; Humphreys, Brown, 2008). In order to find connections between corporate social responsibility and organizational culture, the authors conducted an empirical study in 2007-2008. The total number of respondents was 6094. A standardized organizational culture and corporate social responsibility questionnaire comprising 38 items was developed by the Denki Ringo research group (Ishikawa et al, 2006). The questionnaire was administered in Estonian, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Czech, Finnish, German and Slovakian electric-electronic machine, retail store and machine-building enterprises. Data about four different culture types and eight different countries - Estonia, China, Japan, Russian, Czech, Finnish, German and Slovakian were compared by means of the ANOVA-test. The linear regression analysis was used in order to find statistically relevant connections between corporate social responsibility and organizational culture. The model was developed in order to explain how four organizational culture types hierarchy, clan, market, adhocracy - predict two facets of corporate social responsibility - the firm performance concerning social issues and the firm respects the interests of agents. The main research question is: How does organizational culture predict corporate social responsibility? According to the results, clan, hierarchy and adhocracy culture types predict two facets of corporate social responsibility - the firm performance concerning social issues and the firm respects the interests of agents. Market culture type predicts one facet of corporate social responsibility - the firm performance concerning social issues. Different organizational culture types are dominating in enterprises from different countries. In Estonian and Finnish enterprises clan, in Chinese enterprises market and adhocracy, in Japanese enterprises market and hierarchy, in Russian and German enterprises market, in Czech and Slovakian enterprises hierarchy culture types were dominating in enterprises. Organizational culture is influenced on national culture where organization is operating.