Organizational Culture: A Competitive Advantage in an Increasingly Disruptive World
In an era of disruption, organizations are increasingly recognizing that the right culture can create a competitive advantage. Culture is often expressed as ‘the way we do things around here’. The right culture has the right behaviours – the ones that best support business direction and goals. An organization’s culture, like its business strategy, needs to be agile and adapt to changing business dynamics. As more organizations seek to understand current culture, as well as defining their desired future state culture and identifying the actions needed to build and strengthen the right culture, auditors will increasingly be asked to review culture change programs and their effectiveness.
There is a ‘fit for purpose’ connection between culture (i.e., behaviours) and business direction. Auditors need to be able to assess the effectiveness of culture change efforts and understand whether culture misalignment with business direction is creating risk for the enterprise. Internal audit has an opportunity to support purposeful and effective corporate culture change. This starts with understanding what good culture change looks like and how it happens.