Corporate culture determines how things are done in an organisation and has a major influence on corporate performance.

That was the message from Electricity and Water Affairs Minister Dr Abdulhussain Mirza to more than 250 delegates at the opening session of the International Leadership Conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel yesterday, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

Talking about his years at Bapco, he said that the culture within an organisation affects everything inside that organisation and determines how people act or contribute to it.

"You can tell how an organisation manages its culture from the minute you arrive at the security gate," he said. "In some organisations, you go swiftly from there to senior people you wish to see while in others you can be held up for a long time."

"That is a sign where the culture is not right.

"Corporate culture determines the collective behaviour of the people in an organisation and is driven by the values, visions and norms of that organisation.

"If the organisation is corrupt, then people take it for granted that this is a norm and this becomes an accepted behaviour.

"If the people at the top of an organisation are honest and ethical then that permeates throughout the culture of the operation and people who are not ethical will not survive."

"A corporate culture sets out values that determine how everyone behaves," Dr Mirza said.

"At Bapco, we had a culture where everyone turned up for work on time and that defined who people were and what their responsibilities to the organisation were.

"Even when people had retired they retained the culture of turning up on time for things," he added.-TradeArabia News Service