Modifying the organisational culture in order to increase the company’s level of sustainability

Changing the business behaviour by prioritising sustainability was proved to be an intelligent solution to social, environmental, as well as economic issues. Adapting to the principles of sustainability must begin with modifying the visions, values and beliefs typical of the economic entities, given that these elements form its organisational culture. Therefore, the concept of sustainability can be integrated in the company’s strategy by changing the organisational culture. Given these points, a study was conducted within twenty-eight organisations from the Republic of Moldova with the objective of identifying the optimal organisational culture pattern for increasing the level of sustainability. The first part of the research implies elaborating a suitable way to compute the global performance of an entity which entails economic, social and environmental performance. To realise a comparative analysis of the results obtained by the companies, was proposed a classification method in 5 performance categories, based on which their sustainability was appreciated. Quantitative research is based on the method of questionnaire, which was applied to a number of 300 employees from the same companies. The organization culture was analysed according to the Competing Values Framework (CVF) by Cameron and Quinn (2011), which is one of the most influential and extensively used models in the area of organizational culture research. The findings show that in the analysed companies dominates hierarchy type of organizational culture. However, the study emphasises the fact that companies with a higher sustainability level scored significantly higher on clan, adhocracy and, market cultures, while the hierarchical is lower. The obtained results prove that organisational culture is a factor which has a considerable impact on the company’s sustainability. Adopting a sustainability-oriented organizational culture can make a major contribution in creating long term success in organization.