Organizational culture in Patagonia
Nowadays the organization is an essential part of human society. People face with them every day. At first side, it seems that all organizations are different, they can be commercial, non-commercial. However, there is one thing that unifies all the organizations and this is organizational culture. Each organization in this world has its own culture.
One of the first who introduced this term was Edgard H. Scheine in his book “Organizational Psychology”. However, what is it this organizational culture? Once, Eldridge and Crombie defined organizational culture as: “The unique configuration of norms, values, beliefs, ways of behaving and so on, that characterize the manner in which groups and individuals combine to get things done”(Eldridge and Crombie, 1974). Other words, organizational culture this is how people behave themselves inside the organization. According to Scheine, there are three degrees: Artifacts, Norms and Values, Assumptions. He expressed it in the pyramid. From that time the term “Shine’s pyramid” started to exist. Artifacts this is visible elements in the organization such as: logo, architecture, structure ,and corporate clothes. Other words, these are things that can be recognized by the external world. Norms and values are how rules and strategies are taken inside the organization. Finally, the deepest level of Shine’s pyramid is Assumptions or they can be also named cultural assumptions. This is all these things that people bring into the organization with themselves such as their characters, thoughts, things that people do unconsciously.( Edgard H. Scheine, 2004)
In order to clarify everything let us consider Patagonia’s organizational culture. Patagonia this is the company that sells sustainable outdooring clothes, but it gets here glory for clothes for an extreme sport like climbing, surfing, skiing to name but few. The first thing that should be told about Patagonia that this is one of the most famous environmental friendly organizations in the world. It was found in 1973 by Yvon Chouinard, who was a climber. He was the first who made pitons that could be used several times because pitons that existed in that time were made from soft iron, as a result, they were not very reliable. He sold it for 1.5 dollars each. As the company started to produce more and more pistons the company started to grow. However, soon he had to phase out from them because they did a great impact on the deformation of mountains barks. It was difficult to do this because the major profit came from this production. Nevertheless, Yvon understood that the company should do this in order to save an environment. As he said "The pitons caused permanent damage to the rockwall. For climbers, it was like religion — like they were messing up their own church.”(Yvon,2012, Patagonia: a values-led business from the start). From this story, it can be easily seen that from very beginning Patagonia does care about the environment. This company has been supporting grassroots activists for nearly 40 years and they are proud of this fact. All these facts confirms that one of the biggest Patagonia plus is an environmentally friendly politics of the company and they do all their best to save our nature. Nowadays, they make nearly all types of clothes. It is like they are saying:” if you value our environment you should buy our clothes because we do everything to reduce pollution to name but few”. The main goal of this company can be easily seen from the mission of this company:” Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”(Patagonia,1973)
The second most valuable thing in Patagonia is the workers. After analyzing many different CV of Patagonia’s workers on the web page. It can be concluded that this is the heart of their competitive advantage among other companies that produce clothes like Adidas, Nike ,and others. The first reason why it is so, the workers value company moral principles of running a business and in the same time Patagonia values the worker’s way of living and does everything in order to support them, that is the reason why the biggest part of Patagonia workers are people who like extreme sports. For example, Daniella Egge who is north American retailer marketer likes surfing and climbing, Phil Graves who is director of corporate development likes cycling, running and backpacking. Moreover, Phil says that Patagonia does different children centers where he often leaves his child when he is busy.(Graves,2014)
The biggest cultural assumption that can be found in Patagonia is unity. Daniella Egge says: “I have absolutely no problem using “we” when I talk about the company”(Daniella Egge,2010). Moreover, she says it also can be heard that workers in the company sometimes says “I” from the face of the company. At first side it can be told that this is only language or jargon and it is too far to the level of basic assumption. However, exact this language describes the essence of human nature and the relationship inside the company. Other words, each worker unify himself to the company as one organism and that fact the best shows their relationship in this organization.
Nevertheless, It is difficult to clarify Patagonia’s artifacts because they do not have something special on this level of pyramid. For example not like Nike, Apple, Google, Microsoft and all these well-known companies that famous for their artifacts. Nevertheless, their old logo with mountain the best described company missions and values because now if to go to their site it can be found that their logo is simply the name of their company written by black letters. To add all their workers usually wear company clothes to name but few. However, for me this is not a thing that differentiate Patagonia from others because all companies that sell clothes do this.
In conclusion, I can say that Patagonia this is the company that has very strong organizational culture inside the company. This judgement easily can be made from their workers’ thoughts and ways of living. The main thing that differentiates Patagonia organizational culture from others is strong values and treatment to the workers. Saying strong values I mean their treatment to the environment. Nevertheless, I would even say that it makes a little irritation, because all this environmental grands, problems that appear on your screen make an impression that you are surfing not on company web-page that makes clothes but on “Green Peace” organization or something like that. Moreover, it makes an impression that their company has no any achievements except environmental things. I do not take into consideration achievements that were made 20-30 years ago. I think that is the reason why they do not have very strong artifacts as a brand, strong logo to name but few as Nike or Adidas has. Although, they have very strong organizational culture inside the company, but very weak connection with the external world.
References:
1.Carus.F. (2012), “Patagonia: a values-led business from the start”, Support the Guardian
2. Daniella. E. (2010). “Hang Tight! Routing to checkout…”{Online}.Available at:
https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/danielle-egge.html
3.Eldridge and Crombie.(1974).: 78, quoted in Burnes, 2004: 170
4. Graves. P. (2014) “Hang Tight! Routing to checkout…”{Online}.Available at: https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/phil-graves.html
5. History of Patagonia.” Hang Tight! Routing to checkout..”{Online}. Available at: https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/company-history.html
6. Patagonia. (1973).” Hang Tight! Routing to checkout..”{Online}. Available at: https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/company-info.html
7.Scheine.E. (2004), ”Organizational culture and leadership&r
dquo; 3 ed. 989 Market Street, San Francisco. Jossey-Bass
8. Wilkins, A. L. (1989). “Developing corporate character”. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.