Know Thy Company’s Self – What kind of personality does your organization have?

In the eyes of the law, a company is a person. It has various legal rights: it can own property, it can sue or be sued, and so on. But does a company have a personality in more than a legal sense?

Yes, say some observers, though their understanding of what makes for a corporate personality varies. The 2003 documentary film The Corporation, for example, contends that if companies could be put on a psychiatrist’s couch, they would be diagnosed as psychopaths. On a more constructive note, Decision Technology Group, a British research group, recently created a four-factor model (Honest, Innovative, Prestigious, Powerful) that defines corporate personality as how companies are perceived. The group reports strong correlations between the four factors and various financial measures; profitability is related to prestige, for example, and total shareholder return is associated with honesty.

Here in the United States, management consultants at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. strategyand.pwc.com operate a Website profiler http://www.orgdna.com/ that enables companies to identify themselves as one of seven distinct types, ranging from Passive-Aggressive (very bad) to Resilient (very good). And Sandra Fekete, president of Fekete & Co., a Columbus, Ohio-based marketing communications firm, has developed a diagnostic tool that classifies corporate personalities along the lines of the well-known Myers-Briggs instrument used by many personnel departments. To make the results more concrete, Fekete may help a company translate its assessment into a persona — in the case of one construction company, "Pop," an ultradependable fellow who wears jeans, loves rare steak and cold beer, watches David Letterman and "60 Minutes," and prizes his reputation.

Edward Teach, CFO Magazine

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