People often make the understandable assumption that financial crises are largely due to problems around liquidity and debt, rather than a crisis of culture.

But the severity of recent financial shocks has triggered moves by financial institutions to invest in changes around corporate culture to ensure that their working practices are fit for purpose. But what does this mean in reality? Are there universal cultural traits that can be applied to any business? This leads to the central question, what is culture?

Inside corporations, culture is revealed by organizational structure and processes, which lead to specific strategies and goals that have to be shared by stakeholders to succeed.

Cultural norms influence many day-to-day decisions, ranging from what staff wear to work, time taken off for a break, and how meetings are run. Some of these might seem trivial, but in some societies these are important. It is common in Japanese firms for employees to come together and sing songs before work to instill morale and pride in their company. Across Europe and the US, instead of workers singing together to bond, this is replaced by a company’s brand and its ability to create myths around the brand to support corporate value. In theory, brands retain their myths because they keep developing through daily corporate efforts.

Business culture can also be a mixture of fact and fiction, such as management legends and stories that develop over the years, making fiction a social glue around common values and corporate identity. This works well in a closed environment where people are unable to explore critically or cross social boundaries. But this type of closed environment comes under pressure in an open, fast-changing world, influenced by things such as social media platforms.

Will these new social platforms affect attitudes and beliefs, and in turn affect rigid business cultural attitudes among customers, shareholders and employees?

A key point is that successful cultural change does not just happen, it must be rigorously pursued, and involves a willingness to learn from other organizations and backgrounds that do things differently. In a fast-changing world, multinationals operate in other countries and spread their work practices, which initiate new norms built through dialogue and shared experiences.

In Saudi Arabia, the US firms that established the oil giant Aramco left behind a distinct working culture that was accepted by the new generation of national employees, who embraced its benefits which has distinctly set Aramcons apart from other Saudi intuitions. The same can be said of the Saudi financial sector, where the corporate cultural traits of the parent or foreign managing partner often holds sway. In a fast-changing work environment, creating opportunities for different groups to come together to develop shared experiences, as they create something together is a powerful social glue. In the final analysis, all cultural change should keep this as its first and last objective.

• Dr. Mohamed Ramady is a former senior banker and professor of finance and economics at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran.