MGT-301: Managing Organizations

Also be sure to ceck out your company's website for access to their annual reports.

• What is corporate culture? Read about it from the Encyclopedia of Small Business. Also see an additional entry for Organizational Culture and Financial Statements.
  
• See the entry in the Encyclopedia of Management on Leadership Styles.
• Also see the entry for SWOT analysis, where it discusses the concept of strengths and weaknesses of a company.
• See the entry on Porter's Five Forces in the Encyclopedia of Management.
• Learn how to analyze a company: Now that you have gathered information about the company, industry, and competition, you can fully utilize it by taking advantage of a special feature in Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys. Each survey has a section on how to analyze a company in that specific industry. This feature clues you into what special factors to consider when you evaluate the company and what to look for in the financial statements.

In addition to the resources below, you might examine an ICON report that benchmarks labor productivity for your company. Request reports from the Business Librarian. See sample.

Researching the Leadership Style of a Company's CEO

Finding Information on a Company's Culture

Corporate culture refers to the work environment. It would include such issues as: Work Load and Ethics, Hierarchy, Leadership, Workspace, Hiring Process, Communication Styles, Teamwork, Apparance, Office Friendships, Mentoring, Work environment, Diversity in the workplace, Personnel management, Employees, etc. Below are some suggestions on how to put together a snapshot of the culture of your firm:

• Books: Check out the Plunkett's Industry Almanacs, located under the Finding Industry Information section in this guide. Each e-book has a one page summary on each major company in a specific industry. These summaries gives insight on: 1.) employee salary/benefits 2.) A little description on what employees do 3.) a comment on the Competitive Advantage of the company 4.) and more! See the example for Abercrombie & Fitch.
• Books: See the career guide e-books from Wetfeet available in net-Library. Their career guides and "top 25" books will give insight on the corporate culture of selected companies. Another way to use netLibrary is to do a full text search on corporate culture and your firm. For example, this search: Full-Text: "corporate culture" AND Full-Text: daimlerchrysler  yielded 29 books.
  
• Books: If a book has been published on your firm, it could provide insight into the company's culture. For example, here are the books in the library on Starbucks. Here is a book in NetLibrary on Home Depot. In the library, most company books are in the HD9999 call number section on floor 2.
• Biographies on company leaders might give some insight into the culture, as management practice plays a role in it. So check out the "Researching the Leadership Style..." section above. For example, here is a book in the library by Carly Fiorina, recent CEO of Hewlett Packard.Such a resource could give insight into the recent corporate culture at HP.

Corporate Culture Links.