Corporate culture’s role in Bahrain

In our current time, most companies will have employees of a mix of all nationalities and backgrounds.  The international mixture of employees helps to create a strong and healthy organizations benefiting from the strength of the cosmopolitan environment.  However, as a result these companies create a unique corporate culture that is influenced by and influencing all of their employees at the same time.  A healthy corporate culture can build such a sturdy organization that stands tall and firm against the wind or it can end up weak and susceptible to going down and closure. 

Corporate culture can be defined as the set of values, beliefs, and behavior patterns that forms the core identity of an organization. The measurement of corporate culture was based on individual perceptions of organizational practices and conditions; these perceptions were used to characterize the culture of each organization.

A culture, in a general sense, can be described as it applies to a group of people; a culture is the way in which a group of people resolves the issues of identity, hierarchy, gender, truth and virtue. In other words, culture refers to the customs and civilization of a society or group. The national culture can be defined as the cultural experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation. Cultures, especially national cultures are extremely stable over time. This stability can be explained by the reinforcement of culture patterns by the institutions that themselves are products of the dominant cultural value systems. Any change occurs through trade, conquest, economic or political dominance and technological breakthroughs.

Strong national cultures have important effects in societies as they lead to the flourishing of institutional arrangements and customs and views that members of a society have a clear direction in life and an identified set of goals when they are familiar with particular value systems and are committed to them. The significance of Islam as a social and organizing principle emphasizes collaboration and mutual humility and respect, an employer‘s obligation and duty of care and employees long term commitment to the organization. Employer-employee relations are based on consensus and unity, balance or equilibrium, and high trust exchanges facilitated through extended family networks, which are quite unlike the management environments in many European and US corporations.

When we go to the national culture of the Kingdom of Bahrain, we see that it follows those of the general Arab culture which has unique characteristics different from other cultures in the west or even far east. The informality of life that characterizes Middle Eastern societies is manifested most clearly in its various social institutions. By far the most resonant of them have proven to be the family, the tribe and its derivative ethnicity, and religion. The extended family has retained its strength and vitality despite the onslaught of social change and its attendant consequences, such as the emergence of the nuclear family and the generation gap. Likewise, religion remains deeply embedded in people’s emotions and psyches, its hold seldom affected by fads and political nuances. The Arabs possess a common culture that has united them by religious and historical factors. Their life is interdependent, many of its elements are inseparable, and each aspect of life depends on another. And the Bahraini national culture is characterized by traditions of the extended family influence, which is reflected in both its institutions and the interpersonal. Thus, traditionally, status still depends more upon family than acquired wealth, upon position rather than education, and upon age more than skill or profession. The society in Bahrain is shaped on the basis of family, neighborhood, friendships, regional, and religious affiliation rather than profession.

Looking into the distinct Arab culture, and the unique Bahraini culture, organizations that create a harmonized corporate culture that assimilates with the local culture of the Kingdom of Bahrain while adopting to the international sense, this will create a healthy and positive working environment that all different cultures and backgrounds can blossom. Such environments will benefit from the positive traits of each culture and provide a deep foundation for organizations to perform, grow and withstand the competition of others.