A study in corporate culture: a plan to retain employees through ownership change

This paper takes an in-depth look at the corporate culture of a Northeastern British Columbia (NEBC) oil and gas service company in order to devise a plan to retain employees through an ownership change. There are many small to medium sized successful service companies in NEBC, most owned by an aging population. As the oil and gas industry moves through its latest boom, many are beginning to think of retirement and are looking for someone to purchase their interests. The basis of study in this paper is broken into two areas. First, a literature review in which I defined culture and searched periodicals to reinforce my theory that corporate culture matters. Second, a professional facilitator was hired to hold several meetings with employees to discuss their understanding of the Company's culture including artifacts, espoused values and shared tacit assumptions. The information was compiled, assessed and charted in such a way as to extract areas of concern along with areas of satisfaction amongst the employees (both long and short-term). Cultural undertones were indentified in the discussion and addressed in the plan that was created. This paper is quite specific to the Company studied however any person who chooses to purchase a company with many years of history and long-term staff members will find the procedure outlined herein to be beneficial in discovering the cultural undertones present at the company. Once the culture is defined, a plan can be devised to retain what is working while eliminating areas causing discord providing a smooth transition through the ownership change.