The New Corporate Cultures.

• Author: Feigen, Marc A.
• Position: Review

The New Corporate Cultures By Terrence E. Deal and Alan A. Kennedy Published by Perseus Book, Reading, Mass, 312 pages, $26.00

TERRENCE DEAL and Alan Kennedy's The New Corporate Cultures: Revitalizing the Workplace After Downsizing, Mergers, and Reengineering, argues that the economic pressures of the last 15 years have destroyed the cultural fabric of many major corporations. While these cost-focused strategies have boosted short-term share price, the authors believe that long-term value may suffer, as executives paid short-shrift to the people in their organizations whom they rely on to get the job done. The book focuses on the effects of these managerial trends, with interesting anecdotes and relevant evidence.

In 1982, Deal and Kennedy collaborated on the pioneering Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life -- the work credited with putting corporate culture on the radar screen. In the years since, there has been a deluge of books on this now-mainstream subject, including John Kotter and James Heskett's Corporate Culture and Performance and James Collins and Jerry Porras's Built to Last. The latter two works supplied quantitative evidence to support Deal and Kennedy's original findings: They demonstrated that companies with strong cultures outperform "run-of-the-mill" enterprises by a significant margin. Given the slew of new works and the economic transformations of the past two decades, Deal and Kennedy decided to revisit the issue of corporate culture.

Their new book opens with a restatement of the thesis of Corporate Cultures: "Companies that focus on their people and create a social environment -- or culture -- in which employees can thrive achieve superior, long term business success." A robust culture, according to Deal and Kennedy, builds on shared values and beliefs held by both the company and its employees. A mission statement that incorporates these values must be etched into the consciousness of all employees, not etched into corporate coffee mugs, posters, and other meaningless "corporate graffiti." Ritual and ceremony ensure that a company's culture consists not only of intangible beliefs but also meaningful communal activities. An informal communication network reinforces these bonds on a day-to-day basis.

After outlining the elements of a robust culture, Deal and Kennedy detail how it has fared in recent years. The central part of the book contends that cost-saving measures practiced with increasing...