Cisco - Culture of an Organization

The culture of an organization is best manifest through its observable artifacts. Cisco describes its culture on its website as fast, open, fun loving, challenging and also collaborative. Customer focus, employee empowerment and integrity have been at the center of the culture at CISCO. According to John T chambers CEO Cisco systems the culture of CISCO is driven by high standards of corporate integrity and giving back to the community. It is due to all these factors that CISCO has been a successful company with a good image in the industry.

Observable Artifacts: The culture of an organization can be understood by analyzing the observable artifacts. They include dress code, personal enactment, ceremonies, symbols like logos etc. Cisco emphasizes on communication and collaboration. It shows in the form of teamwork at Cisco. Cisco uses decision making teams to encourage collaboration and innovation. As the CEO John T Chambers states the benefit of these decision making teams are speed, skill and flexibility. At Cisco there are cross functional teams to make good advantage of business opportunities. The most observable artifact at CISCO is its cross functional teams and employee network.

Espoused Values: Cisco’ culture is primarily driven by values like, customer focus, employee empowerment and integrity. It believes in providing growth opportunity to staff and connecting them employee networks. These networks foster inclusiveness. At Cisco the differences in each person are valued so as to keep the workforce motivated. At Cisco they understand how critical it is to have talented and motivated employees for the success of the company. Cisco tries to keep its workforce motivated and aligned with the organizational vision.

Enacted Values: Inside many companies there always remains a gap between the espoused and enacted values. But at Cisco it is always tried to enact the espoused values. The customer’s feedback is of utmost importance and value to the company. CISCO also