IBM Culture IBM -- Maintaining Culture IBM Essay

IBM Culture

IBM -- Maintaining Culture

IBM was able to maintain its corporate culture for many years in the midst of an every changing environment. This paper explores how IBM was able to do so.

IBM serves as a prime example for many organizations who wish for create a corporate culture that endures. The organization was able to embed a corporate culture that was able to withstand the pressures that are created by a dynamic and rapidly changing global business environment. Not only was IBM able to keep its sole throughout the changes, so to speak, but it was also able to leverage its culture to tackle the emerging dilemmas that it faced in the wake of globalization. With nearly half a million employees this was not an easy task either. The culture that IBM was able to sustain definitely had its access to state of the art technology. This allowed for IBM to collaborate and disseminate information on an unprecedented basis.However, technology is only a tool, and IBM's collaboration and information sharing was only as good as the information being shared.

Sam Palmisanso in 2002, IBMs chief executive officer, realized that the command and control culture would not work in a twenty first century business environment (George, 2012). As a result, he led a seminar of roughly half a million employees that was interactive. As a result of the conference, the IBM employees decided that humility and openness, patience and a long-term view, directness, and pragmatism were vital to the organization and could serve as the bedrock of the future of the organization. The quote that can best describe this event is summed up in this passage:

"The old model of the heroic superman is increasingly archaic. The most active and successful leaders today see themselves as part of the global community and peer groups. They listen as well as they speak. Never confuse charisma with leadership. The first job of….....