True Culture and False Values - A case study on the implementation of Fagerhult Group's organizational culture

Abstract: Background To succeed all companies need to formulate practical guidelines for why, how and where they are doing business. Examples of these guidelines include the stated mission, vision, the identity, and overall goals. Companies formulate the mission, vision, goals and strategies in line with their organizational culture. Therefore successfully managing culture and its underlying assumptions, morals and beliefs, is the basis for the prosperity of a company. The organizational culture can be summarized and communicated through core value statements. At its best these can be communicated to employees and serve as a constant reminder, a reinforcement of the most important aspects of the company´s culture. Purpose This thesis analyzes how the company Fagerhult Group implements and communicates their organizational culture and how their written core values represent the way the company do business. The Case The authors have investigated the company Fagerhult Group and their process of implementing and communicating their culture and stated core values. The authors have specifically focused on how this was carried out in the Polish office. The company entered Poland in 2007 as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), hence it provides a clear and practical example on how the company´s implementation process looks like. Method The authors have conducted a single case study, using a qualitative research method approach, where mainly semi-structured telephone interviews have been used for collecting information. Conclusion Fagerhult Group has successfully implemented the true culture, characterized by customer focus, quality, respect and empowerment, into the Polish office. This was done through face-to-face communication and situation-based training. These methods have proven to be highly effective when implementing culture, values and other important messages, since it provides the employees with a practical example on how to act and behave according to the Fagerhult way. However, the written core values; respect, responsibility and enterprise, mainly communicated through annual reports and company web page are found to not be entirely cohesive with the true organizational culture. Therefore these have not had any practical penetrating power and have been poorly communicated to the employees.