Intel Corporation’s organizational culture defines the company’s capabilities in the global market for semiconductors, microprocessors and other technological products. A firm’s organizational culture indicates the values and traditions that influence employees and their decisions. In the case of Intel, the corporate culture is applied as a way of ensuring the company’s competencies despite competition and other challenges in the industry. For example, the company’s organizational culture promotes human resource support for high quality products, which help fulfill Intel’s mission statement and vision statement. The company maintains capabilities to address rapid changes in the market. As an industry leader, Intel benefits from using its organizational culture for business resilience.
Intel’s organizational culture enables business capability to withstand challenges in the global semiconductor market. This corporate culture is a critical factor that supports the company’s effectiveness in developing competitive and profitable microprocessors and related products.
Intel’s Organizational Culture & Its Characteristics
Intel Corporation’s values are the main defining factors of the organizational culture, according to CEO Brian Krzanich. The company is known for its corporate culture of meritocracy, which considers employee ability and output. This culture differentiates Intel from competitors, maintains a high-end brand, and influences customers and suppliers to adopt technological efficiency in their mindsets. The following are the main characteristics of Intel’s organizational culture:
- Customer orientation
- Risk Taking
- Discipline
- Great place to work
- Quality
- Results orientation
Customer Orientation. Customers are a focal point that defines Intel’s organizational culture. This cultural characteristic is strengthened based on the principle that the company must effectively satisfy customers’ needs. For example, employees are trained to identify possible issues customers might experience with products. This corporate cultural feature enables the company to determine concerns that must be included in the product development process. Through this characteristic of the organizational culture, Intel also enhances customer service to maintain partnerships with other technology companies and to address end-user concerns.
Risk Taking. Intel Corporation includes risk-taking as a value integrated in the organizational culture. This cultural feature is all about taking the extra step to try new or novel things. For example, Intel’s workers are encouraged to bring up solutions for consideration among upper management. This characteristic of the corporate culture contributes to the company’s proactive ability to address issues. Thus, Intel’s organizational culture supports proactive problem solving.
Discipline. This cultural characteristic puts emphasis on rules and norms. Intel has a system of rules on employee behavior and how to conduct business. This feature of the organizational culture addresses the need to maintain effective business processes and to streamline the organization according to general strategies and Intel’s operations management policies. For example, discipline in workers’ activities minimizes deviations of output quality relative to the company’s standards. In this way, the organizational culture helps Intel maintain business efficiency.
Great Place to Work. Intel Corporation uses its organizational culture as a tool for optimizing employee motivation and morale. Motivation and morale minimize employee turnover and associated costs. This characteristic of the corporate culture is applied in cooperation with the employees for their own benefit. For example, Intel has HR programs that foster camaraderie and rapport among employees. The company benefits from its organizational culture in terms of a motivated workforce that satisfies the goals of the semiconductor business.
Quality. Quality is a major selling point aligned with Intel’s generic strategy and intensive growth strategies. As such, the company makes sure that its organizational culture embodies quality principles and ideals. For example, HR training programs highlight output quality as a measure of employee excellence. This characteristic of the corporate culture supports efforts to differentiate Intel’s microprocessors from competitors like AMD.
Results Orientation. This feature of Intel’s corporate culture aligns with the principles of meritocracy. For example, the company considers output and achievements as criteria in determining employees’ merits in performance appraisals and promotions. Intel integrates results orientation in its organizational culture through HR programs that recognize satisfactory output. The behavioral impacts of such programs become part of the company’s organizational culture.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Intel Corporation’s Organizational Culture
Intel’s organizational culture has the advantage of support for business improvement through risk taking, and ensures business resilience in the face of global competition. This factor helps the company develop new or novel products. Another advantage of this corporate culture is that it contributes to Intel’s competitive advantage. For example, as one of the cultural characteristics, quality ensures attractive products to maintain the company’s market share.
A disadvantage of Intel’s organizational culture is the limited support it has for rapid innovation. Even though risk taking encourages employees to take certain risky steps that could benefit the company, this cultural feature does not push all employees to contribute to the innovation process. A recommendation is to improve the organizational culture through additional emphasis on innovative thinking, which is critically important in addressing challenges associated with the dynamics of global markets for microprocessors, mobile devices, and related technologies.
References
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- Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2015). The value of corporate culture. Journal of Financial Economics, 117(1), 60-76.
- Hartnell, C. A., Kinicki, A. J., Lambert, L. S., Fugate, M., & Doyle Corner, P. (2016). Do similarities or differences between CEO leadership and organizational culture have a more positive effect on firm performance? A test of competing predictions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(6), 846.
- Huhtala, M., Tolvanen, A., Mauno, S., & Feldt, T. (2015). The associations between ethical organizational culture, burnout, and engagement: A multilevel study. Journal of Business and Psychology, 30(2), 399-414.
- Intel Corporation – An Overview of Life as an Intel Employee.
- Intel Corporation – Code of Conduct.