Part A – General

Why do people behave in a similar way? Do they have shared beliefs and values? Chances are our minds shape our actions and once people speak the same language and do things in a similar way, they form a culture. Different cultures can be seen in countries, companies and communities.

We grow up with values ​​from our national culture such as certainty vs. uncertainty, risk taking vs. risk aversion and good vs. evil, and kept them deeply and gradually changed over time. Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist, has identified six dimensions of national culture: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, long-term orientation, and indulgence vs. restriction. The scores for the dimensions vary from country to country. The power distance is high in Latin, Asian and African countries and low in Germanic, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon nations. Latin and Germanic countries and Japan are high on uncertainty avoidance; Chinese, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries are more accepting of uncertainty.

On the other hand, corporate culture is understood as dress code, systems and ‘culture carriers’ such as its founder, CEO and managers. Business practices are developed and learned on the job to achieve its mission and objectives. In addition, people can move from one company to another. Therefore, they are more superficial and adaptable than the fundamental values ​​of the national culture. According to Hofstede, national cultures belong to anthropology; organizational cultures to sociology. Within a large company, various departments may even exhibit different cultures due to working with different people.

Can corporate culture weaken national culture? Conflicts will certainly arise especially in multinational corporations (MNCs) due to cultural differences between the local national culture and the imported corporate culture. Using an MNC in the Middle East as an example, the local worker will not stay up late to complete his work if he has a family duty and this does not mean that he is an irresponsible employee. However, a Western executive might take it as not caring about his job and disagreements could arise. An INSEAD professor, André Laurent, found that cultural differences were significantly greater among managers from different nations working within the same MNC than among managers working for companies in their own home country. In a typical MNC, the Germans apparently became more German, the Americans more American, the Swedes more Swedish, and so on. The explanation is not very understandable, so it could suggest that employees are not adapting to a shared corporate culture if it is not aligned with their national cultures. There is also a general trend that workers who do not fit into the corporate culture either will not be employed in the first place or will quit within a few years.

Corporate culture is not defined in a single day and it evolves and becomes more visible as time goes by. Almost all of the successful companies had developed a strong and positive culture, based not only on management and administration, but also on leadership and empowerment. For example, Toyota introduced their “Toyota Way” and their clear devotion to teamwork and continuous improvement (“Kaizen”) has given them a competitive advantage and attracted many companies to learn from them. With a strong and clear corporate culture, companies can enjoy many benefits, such as maintaining similar standards, increased loyalty, increased motivation and productivity, and greater management control.

How do leaders create corporate culture? At the start of the business, the founders play an important role in setting the standards based on their beliefs, values, and assumptions. However, once new members of the management team begin to join, more learning experiences will be shared and new beliefs, values ​​and assumptions will be passed on. As more and more people join the company, there is a greater need for the CEO to create a shared vision, code of practice, and the same level of risk-taking. Unfortunately, culture does not survive if the main ‘culture carriers’ leave or if most members leave. With a strong value of individualism in the US, companies acquire a similar value. Thus, a corporate culture might reflect the characteristics of its founder(s), such as Jack Welsh at GE and Steve Jobs at Apple. Interestingly, there are also companies with long histories that can continue their own unique culture, no matter who or who is in top management. IBM is an example.

Part B – Specific (BreadTalk)

BreadTalk was established in 2000 and is a designer confectionery shop, most famous for its cream-filled buns topped with pork floss, called Flosss. For the third year, BreadTalk Group Limited was listed on the SGX. It is one of Singapore’s leading food and beverage brands, known for being creative, innovative, innovative and for its premium products. Today, BreadTalk has reached 12 countries with more than 300 bakeries (including franchises), 33 food courts and 8 restaurants, supported by more than 4,000 employees. Its brands include BreadTalk, Toast Box, Food Republic, Din Tai Fung, and The Station Kitchen.

BreadTalk’s vision is to be a trend-setting, global lifestyle brand and its mission is to lead a new lifestyle culture with new and innovative shifts and creative differentiation to craft products with passion and vitality. They believe in providing QSC (Quality, Service and Cleanliness) for their customers. They treat training as an important aspect for their company. All new trainees must first receive training at their BreadTalk outlets to learn how to bag bread, serve customers, etc. Periodically, the training and development department also sends its headquarters staff on professional development courses. They also strongly believe in teamwork and before any new BreadTalk outlet opens, all of the outlet staff will head to the beach or for a day of exciting activities and team building. With a closer bond and understanding, your staff will be able to work well together.

Additionally, BreadTalk President Dr. George Quek encourages all of his staff to be creative and always think outside the box. For his company to expand successfully, a trusted team of employees and partners is vital. He empowers his managers to make decisions on their own. “You can’t just send someone abroad without empowering them. The market in China, for example, is much bigger than Singapore, so the manager we send there needs to be trained to deal with that kind of scale.” His secret to BreadTalk success is to be diligent.

In my opinion, our Singaporean culture (eg, heavy emphasis on education, collectivism and diligence) plays a role in shaping BreadTalk’s corporate culture, especially by local employees. BreadTalk is also clearly shaped by its founder, Dr. Quek. The main difficulty is making your foreign employees feel comfortable working in Singapore. I think the BreadTalk culture will not be affected much by other Asian countries, for example China, India and Vietnam. However, in today’s competitive marketplace, there are distinctive patterns and traits that companies must cultivate to be successful, such as creativity, innovation, differentiation, training, team building, and autonomy.

In 2008, BreadTalk specially created a bun, called “Peace Panda” and all proceeds from the sales of this bun went to help Sichuan earthquake recovery. Together with the Red Cross, they had raised S$40,000 in just 1 week. This corporate social responsibility (CSR) act demonstrated their innovative way of using their product as a fundraising tool by choosing China’s national animal and giving it a name, also starting with ‘P’. Although CSR is not really considered part of your corporate culture, it gives your brand free media coverage and can leave a deep impression on the hearts of your customers by showing humanity and compassion. It’s like a way of differentiation from other F&B companies. When people support the cause by buying their “Peace Panda”, they will also buy other breads. It also helped boost their sales.