Effective Continuation of the Company Culture

Introduction

Some firms or enterprises find it challenging to maintain continuity and a successful company culture, particularly when management is changed, as is often the case in family businesses. The management needs a well-formulated plan that outlines what must be done, how it must be done, where it must be done, and when it must be done in order to establish consistency in strong business culture. The long-term direction and maintenance of an efficient corporate culture depend greatly on the plan. As such, In-N-Out Burger will need to develop a concise plan of maintaining its predominant culture that has greatly contributed to its sustainability over years of its establishment based on fundamentals of effective organizational culture management as outlined in this paper.

Recruitment and hiring

Employees' understanding of the company culture is very critical for its long-term continuation of its effectiveness. Understanding of the organizational culture by employees can effectively be tapped at the time of recruitment and hiring (Alvesson, 2016). Meanwhile, it is the responsibility of the company to ensure that it has the right recruitment team in place that understands the culture and can easily relate this culture with personalities and behaviors of the recruits with a single objective of picking the best candidates whose personalities and characters exactly fit the culture of the company. As such, In-N-Out Burger should have a rigorous recruitment process directed towards integrating the right team in the business and especially the top management. As much as In-N-Out Burger is a family business and family members should be recognized by the process, the processes should as well be cognizant of candidates or rather employees' abilities to effectively adapt to the organizational culture and the risks involved in favoring family members for employment consideration regardless of their qualifications and abilities. In essence, In-N-Out Burger should be pursuant to individuals' competence about company culture; this will keep the business from inconsistency in behaviors and deficits in the fiducial responsibility of employees and the top management as witnessed between Boyd and Lynsi Martinez. Effective recruitment process will bring about the incorporation of consistent minds focused on a single agenda of maintaining In-N-Out Burger culture.

Systemize recognition

Systemizing recognition is a way of focusing on employees to get the best from them. The aspect is very crucial to maintaining effective organizational culture. It entails recognizing employees when they go to great extents for the effectiveness of the company's culture. This can be achieved through praise or public recognition which is, in fact, some of the best ways to boost employees' morale. Popular research indicates increased employee productivity and performance on recognition. Meanwhile, recognition is essential in value and culture extension. In this case, therefore, the directors of In-N-Out Burger should develop a system for recognizing employees who excel in promoting their business culture which would ultimately lead to increased desire of organizational employees to promote the company culture (Schein, 2010).

Get leadership on board

Leadership forms the foundation of the company culture and doubles up as one of the most important aspects of maintaining effective organizational culture. People demonstrate exemplary performance when they have an inspiring role model, and on the contrary, they lack the sense of direction. Employees look upon the behavior of their managers as a measure of organizations' acceptable standards which therefore means that the conduct of leadership largely contributes to the organizational culture. Moreover, culture effectively spreads top-down and thus placing the huge responsibility for top management about organizational culture. In-N-Out Burger is not exceptional from this; the top management bears the burden of maintaining and continuing their predominant business culture. Conflicts in lawsuits of In-N-Out Burger top management's ruins the aspect of inspirational leadership as dishonesty and failure in fiduciary responsibility damages and tarnishes exemplary behavior of the top management. Differences In-N-Out Burger directors should be privately and quickly be settled to restore business and its culture on track and by ensuring that leadership is inspirational and exemplary.

Preservation of company traditions

The fact that In-N-Out Burger is a family business makes it easy to understand and maintain the business traditions. Preservation of business traditions is as important as good examples, communication, and inspirational leadership and as far as organizational culture is concerned. Traditions form distinctive aspects of people and business which eases identification. Traditions symbolize values and uniqueness, very important factors in the development of a loyal and strong customer base. In-N-Out Burger culture is built on traditions, things that used to be done in the ninetieths are still being done today; these are the things that In-N-Out Burger customers identify the business with and as such they are the things that have largely contributed to the brand loyalty that has lasted for decades and decades. This means that sustainability in In-N-Out Burger is largely dependent on traditions and therefore the top management of the chain of restaurants should formulate a concrete company policy that will continually guide the maintenance of business traditions and culture.

Communication

A plan for effective continuation of organizational culture is incomplete without planning for communication. Values are passed from generation to generation through communication, people learn from communication. Traditions for In-N-Out Burger cannot be passed to the next generation without communication. This defines the criticality of workplace communication in the success of the organizational culture. The top management of In-N-Out Burger should focus on developing a working environment where employees feel empowered in ideas, thoughts, and comments sharing. Equally, the top management should be empowered in listening and acting on what they hear. This provides an effective way of passing values and culture of In-N-Out Burger.

References

Alvesson, M. (Ed.). (2016). Organizational culture. Sage.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership(Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.