Explain how effective culture is an important source of competitive advantage?
What will be an ideal response?
A competitor can easily imitate another organization's structure, but it is very difficult for a competitor to imitate another organization's culture, for culture is embedded in the day-to-day interactions of functional personnel. Culture is very difficult to control and manage, let alone imitate or copy, so a company that has an effective culture has an important source of competitive advantage.
The coordination abilities that stem from an organization's culture emerge gradually and are a product of many factors: an organization's property rights system, its structure, its ethics, and the characteristics of its top-management team. Because these factors can be combined in many different ways, reproducing another organization's culture is difficult.