Working in different team cultures

Research X NFNG
September 2020

Corporate culture is surrounded by numerous legends and prejudices but still is hard to be defined. We wanted to study it through and discover why and how cultures of different companies diverge from each other. The idea behind the research was to highlight, that there are no ultimately bad or good cultures, they are just different, like people, countries, books and anything else. The main issue is to chose the culture that fits you and your career and life goals and desires at the moment.

To explore the issue in-depth, we analyzed nine companies that differ in size, age, investment volumes, business characteristics, and a number of products they deliver to the market. According to these criteria, we conditionally divided the companies into three segments - with a young, mature and corporate culture. To describe each of them, we held extensive interviews with product managers who experienced different cultures. That's how we tracked employees' life cycles and highlighted such cultural components as communication style, ideas about missions and values, and hierarchy.We identified similarities and differences common for different formats, dispelled some myths, and received many insights to get absorbed in. For example, corporations can be divided into two sub-segments by tech component: those who make money from it and those who optimize business processes with its help.

The research will be useful if your are in the process of choosing a workplace or thinking about how to change you company's culture.

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