The Impact of an Intranet Platform on Organizational Culture for Medium-Sized Corporations

When we start developing a new intranet platform for any sized company, we always ensure that we are made aware of the company's organizational culture, as we need to make sure that modern intranets have applications and interfaces that are aligned and will stand the maximum chance of being adopted by the target users.

Ultimately, this ensures that the sponsors (which for medium-sized companies are normally members of a management team that includes the business owners or CEO) are pleased with the intranet platform project outlines, mock ups, applications and functionality, and are willing to proceed with moving the project forward, including handing over implementation responsibility to the designated project team.

However, during recent meetings we have actually asked the interesting question - "Would you like modern intranets to change the organizational culture - and if so how?"

This has led to some very interesting and thought-provoking discussions. Based on our recent experience it is clear that a modern intranet platform offers many ways to impact corporate culture and therefore should be one of the primary tools with which to do so.

What Factors Determine Organizational Culture?

It is accepted knowledge that organizational culture is expressed in shared values and practices across a company and can be supported by modern intranets. This is shaped by multiple factors, some of which are external to the business - such as laws, regulations, business climate, industry - or are a part of the legacy - such as history, ownership, and role models.

But many critical cultural factors are internal, and therefore subject to influence and in turn capable of evolution, however difficult this may be to accept or adapt when planning an intranet platform.

Cultural factors to consider when developing modern intranets include: expressed corporate values, technologies the organization uses, whether the company continually looks forwards or to the legacy of the past, freedom of individual expression, how feedback is captured and expressed, how responsibilities are allocated, participation in the decision making process, what's condoned, what's discouraged, and how complaints are handled.

Difficulty of Changing Organizational Culture

The difficulties of changing organizational culture are well documented, extremely important and should be considered when developing modern intranets. Changing the cultural aspects of an organization is highly important whenever the competitive landscape changes and the old way of working and attitudes are no longer generating the lasting returns that the company has historically enjoyed.

Therefore, a new intranet platform should, in our view, be considered as one of the most practical ways to influence and change corporate culture, since an intranet is so centered on branding, communications, freedom of expression, and innovation.

What Aspects of Organizational Culture are Relevant to Modern Intranets?

There are many aspects of corporate culture that are expressed in an intranet platform and therefore subject to influence by it. For the purposes of this article we will concentrate on just four of the most obvious:

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