Aligning Organizational Culture to Strategy to Achieve Competitive Advantage in International Business

There is a growing fascination among corporate leaders with workplace culture as a means for boosting performance and providing competitive advantage. Organizational study experts have established that an organization's long-term sustainability, profitability, turnover and commitment are significantly affected by organizational culture, and organizational culture and strategy are related. According to a Forbes study, 92% of executives believe that improving the Firm's organizational culture would improve a Firm's value. Experience has shown that many corporate leaders need help understanding how culture could aid the building of a high-performing organization and thus ignore it. Time and time again, many failure-proof detailed strategies and tactical plans fail because leaders do not appreciate the power and dynamics of culture in enabling firm success. The question, then, is, how can an organization ensure that its culture supports the actualization of its strategy? Are culture and strategy independent or complementary approaches to increasing an organization's success? This paper has promoted the understanding of organizational culture and how it could align the operating cultures of organizations with their business strategies to achieve competitive advantage and stimulate higher performance. It also demonstrated that a strong culture drives positive organizational outcomes when aligned with strategy and leadership.