What is company culture? Definition and examples

This article explores the following questions:

1.              How to recognize a company's culture

2.              Difference between culture and structure in a company

3.              Examples of corporate culture

4.              Why culture influences performance

Culture, "what people really do when no one is watching".

Culture... invisible, silent, omnipresent. Often perceived as something intangible, it nevertheless acts as a shared language that guides attitudes, choices, reactions — even when no one talks about it. It influences the way teams work, decide, cooperate, innovate... or resist change.

Culture is at the heart of an organization's vitality, because it shapes everything that happens there: the way we work together, make decisions, create, learn, deal with crises.

Corporate culture is not just a slogan or a few values displayed in a corridor. It is first and foremost what profoundly structures the way an organization operates on a daily basis. As Edgar H. Schein explains, it is based on a set of fundamental presuppositions that a group has built up over time to respond to its internal and external challenges: "an invisible base of beliefs, reflexes, ways of reacting that guide behaviors without us even realizing it." In a more direct formula, Deal and Kennedy summarize culture as "the way we do things around here," with its rituals, heroes, habits, and all its unwritten rules.

In short, corporate culture is both what you feel from the first contact, what people do when no one is watching, and what you really learn by moving around in the corridors or chatting at the coffee machine, through informal interactions that reveal the true way of working.

In a few seconds, the culture is revealed.

Imagine walking into a computer store called "Excellence," but the service doesn't have to be. The seller ignores you, or welcomes you without any real interest. And as soon as you ask a question, you are mostly told about problems, technical constraints, what "won't be possible" — when you're just looking for a solution. The products may be very good, but experience tells of a culture where the diagnosis of blockages is valued more than customer help.

Conversely, push the door of a small independent bookstore. There, something happens immediately: customers — young, old, regulars or passing through — almost always leave with a smile. A warm piece of advice, a spontaneous recommendation, an authentic conversation around a book. The relationship is not a "plus", it is part of the job. You can feel a culture where curiosity, attention and the pleasure of transmitting count as much as the books themselves.

And you, have you ever wondered what the culture of the stores, companies with which you are in contact, is? If you had to describe it with a few adjectives, impressions or sensations, what would spontaneously come to mind?

The first few minutes say a lot. They reveal what is valued, encouraged, tolerated or neglected. They show how teams think, interact, and care for each other — or don't.
Because culture, before being said, is lived. And it can be seen in the details.

A lever at the heart of performance

When culture is strong and coherent, it becomes a solid foundation: it gives meaning, aligns energies and mobilizes talent. But when it is neglected, stopped being cared for or intentionally steered, it can weaken the organization, create confusion and slow down collective dynamics.

This is exactly what Peter Drucker points out with his famous "Culture eats strategy for breakfast". Even the most brilliant strategy — the best thought-out, the most ambitious — will be weakened or hijacked if culture is not taken into account and aligned. An ignored culture acts like an underwater current: it influences behaviors, decisions, and priorities far more strongly than any strategic plan, no matter how well designed.

Taking care of culture therefore means consolidating the foundation on which any strategy is based. Because while strategy is often decided at the top, culture serves as a bridge between the intentions of leaders and the reality experienced by teams.

It is what makes change possible... or that blocks it.

In the example of the computer store and bookstore cited above, the gap between the desired image and the experience lived by customers shows how culture influences everything: it confirms, corrects or contradicts the best strategic intentions.

And when strategy and culture don't go in the same direction, it's always the culture that wins in the end.

Four characteristics specific to each culture

The culture of a group can be read through four key traits.

First, it is shared: it never exists alone, but circulates between members, in their tacit rules and their ways of acting on a daily basis.

It is also omnipresent. It can be spotted in symbols, stories, visible gestures... but also in what is not seen: deep beliefs, silent evidence.

The culture is also sustainable. It takes root over time, is transmitted from one generation to the next and is strengthened as individuals recognize themselves in it and perpetuate it.

Finally, it is implicit: a kind of invisible language that guides our decisions and behaviors without us always being aware of it.

The link between structure, culture and relationships

Structure, culture and relational dynamics are inseparable : it is their coherence that keeps an organization standing.

1.              The structure (what is visible) brings together the official rules of the game: organizational charts, procedures, roles, missions.

2.              Culture (invisible but deeply felt) corresponds to implicit rules: values, atmosphere, shared beliefs, emotional climate.

3.              Relational dynamics (what we see on a daily basis) are the concrete expression of all this: cooperation, withdrawal, commitment, tensions or conflicts.

These three dimensions are constantly influencing each other.

If the structure changes but the culture does not follow, relations become tense.

If the culture is ignored, the structure eventually cracks.

And acting only on the relational symptoms — managing isolated conflicts — often comes down to dealing with the consequences, without touching the root causes. Because in many cases, tensions do not arise from a personal disagreement, but from a lack of adjustment between the structure, the culture and the way of working together.

I am inspired here by the work of Rosemary Napper, in Transactional Analysis, who invites us to consider culture not as a setting, but as a living framework that shapes the organization. For Napper, history, traditions, implicit norms, and collective benchmarks profoundly influence the way people think, act, and interact in a society (and in society at large). We can therefore never dissociate an individual from his or her cultural or structural context. She also proposes to broaden the notion of the life script: far from being frozen in childhood, it is constantly influenced — and sometimes rewritten — by the culture of the society into which one is born, with its unwritten rules, its informal values and its singular way of managing power and relationships.

To illustrate how deeply our cultural context shapes our perceptions, we only need to look back. Re-reading "Tintin in the Congo" today, or rewatching a film from 15 or 20 years ago (choose whichever you like — Lolita, for instance, comes to mind) is enough to show how much our cultural norms have evolved. Behaviours once considered “normal” by most people can now feel shocking, or even lead to calls for condemning the author.

Judging an author solely through our contemporary sensitivities often creates an anachronism. Every era has its own cultural norms, and no one can fully step outside the “fishbowl” they live in. An author always writes from within a system of representations that shapes their society. Criticising them without considering that context can lack nuance. This does not prevent us from examining the real impact of a work — nor from questioning the author’s responsibility — but it does invite us to distinguish critical analysis from moral blame applied after the fact.

And remember — for those who lived through it — that until the 1990s, it was still common in some companies for a manager to smoke in the office while dictating a note to a secretary. What would seem absurd or shocking today appeared perfectly ordinary back then.

Which leads to an important question: what behaviours and practices of today will no longer be tolerated — and will look truly anachronistic — in 5, 10 or 15 years?

What to do and how to act with all this? Well, understanding culture requires understanding structure, and vice versa.

The challenge is not to define the "best" structure or the "right" culture, but to seek their coherence and their adjustment to the context. It is only when these three dimensions are in harmony that work becomes fluid, livable and conducive to commitment.

Intervening in the structure by integrating the existing culture strengthens trust, nurtures psychological safety and improves cooperation. It's pragmatic, concrete, and much more effective than just managing tensions on the surface.

Because a coherent organization (i.e. a clear structure), aligned (i.e. with a shared meaning, behaviors that create value) and living (i.e. with co-construction, evolution and the possibility of each person to act from his or her strengths) allows people to cooperate, evolve and contribute with meaning.

This way of acting clearly has a positive influence on collective performance.

To go further, the next article offers a method for observing and evaluating the culture of your team or organization. You will find a series of questions to start thinking, as well as a questionnaire to analyze your cultural dynamics and your real practices in more detail. A valuable tool to better understand how you work... and pave the way for sustainable developments.