A local view of culture

I decided for this week’s assignment on culture that it might be fun to look a little closer to home. Austin’s unique local culture is something that gets talked about a lot: “Keep Austin Weird” is a favorite, often used motto. I wondered how the unique Austin culture might be reflected in local companies and turned to an interview conducted by Texas CEO Magazine to see what one local entrepreneur had to say.

Bazaarvoice is a fast growing Software as a Service startup company in Austin. They help companies such as Best Buy and Macy’s to positively impact sales by assisting them in creating and managing programs for online customer reviews (Habel, 2010). It has been voted as one of the best places to work in Austin since 2007, and according to an interview by Texas CEO Magazine, the founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice, Brett Hurt, attributes their success to the organization’s culture (Habel, 2010).

Hurt didn’t reveal too many details about what the Bazaarvoice culture looked like, but he did share an element that he considered important in building the company’s culture (Habel, 2010).  According to Hurt, establishing the culture at Bazaarvoice begins with investing heavily in making sure that they hire the right person for the job (Habel, 2010).  The hiring process includes giving all potential employees a test, which requires 12 to 16 hours of studying on the part of the candidates. If candidates make it through the test, it’s as though they’ve been through a rite of passage and they are included “in the club” (Habel, 2010).

This hiring process creates a strong organizational culture, as described by Sorensen (2009) and is a necessary step for Bazaarvoice because, as Hurt states, “Having high retention is incredibly important for culture” (Habel, 2010). By keeping long-term employees, the company is ensuring that their culture will be maintained (Sorensen, 2009). Interestingly, this seems to be an approach similar to the “socialization” approached used by P&G to onboard new hires (Denison & Mishra, 1995, p. 212).

One of the few specific aspects of the Bazaarvoice culture that Hurt does discuss is the company’s trust based vacation policy (Habel, 2010). The company doesn’t issue any formal vacation policy – no formal accrual or tracking; instead the company relies on the employees to make the right decisions about their time off. Hurt argued that this might be “one of [their] most radical cultural policies” (Habel, 2010). This is reminiscent of how People Express sought to maintain a “highly egalitarian organizational culture” through “innovative human resource practices” (Denison & Mishra, 1995, p. 210).

It may not be possible to determine whether or not the unique Austin culture influenced the practices adopted by Bazaarvoice. It is interesting, though, to find that the CEO views the company’s culture to be a critical element in the success the company has achieved. Based on the brief interview conducted by Texas CEO Magazine, it appears that Bazaarvoice has a strong culture with high levels of involvement (Denison & Mishra, 1995).  Although this is currently serving the organization well, will it ultimately lead, as Denison and Mishra (1995) suggest, to their inability to adapt in the future?

References

Denison, D. R. & Mishra, A. K. (1995). Toward a theory of organizational culture and effectiveness. Organization Science, 6, 204-223

Habel, S. (2010, May). The culture cure – Brett Hurt, CEO, Bazaarvoice. Texas CEO Magazine. Retrieved from http://texasceomagazine.com/features/brett-hurt-from-austins-bazaarvoice-talks-about-the-importance-of-culture/

Sorenson, J. (2009). Note on organizational culture. Harvard Business School, 1-6.