Many workers who have changed jobs or have changed career paths, often face an intriguing question of comparing their new company with their old one. What is company culture, and is this shaped by a dominant CEO or is there an intrinsic corporate culture that has shaped the boss?

This is not an academic question. The way a firm works can either make a new employee settle in to become a long-term productive part of the business, or force one to leave. Sometimes organizations that operate in the same field, such as banking, and basically offer the same services, exhibit completely different cultural vibes. This author found that out when working with two of the largest banks in the US — Citibank and Chase Manhattan, with their headquarters based just a few blocks from each other in New York. However, their corporate cultures and management styles were very different.

In essence, the question is how do companies motivate their employees? A more merce-nary company has a somewhat clearer strategy that incentivizes its employees to work at their risk, where loyalty and relationships are not part of that philosophy. This type of organization works well when there are few interdependencies between employees, allowing them to act as independent transaction hunters. Traditional service companies such as law firms, consultancies and specialized investment banks, fit into this broad category.

Others are networked organizations where people are motivated by being the best among their peers and do all they can to preserve this status. This does not mean that one culture is better than the other, but they emphasize different things. These two concepts place different demands on the style of the company CEO.

A charismatic CEO is said to inspire employees to be proud of their firm and share common values across the group, while developing personal strategies to allow staff contributions to common goals to be transparently evaluated. Is this idealistic setting a reality or wishful thinking? Admittedly, it is hard to pull off and tends to be sustained only in smaller one-location companies where everyone can rally around a charismatic CEO and common goals.

Retail and real estate developer Majid Al Futtai m, who died at 87 in December and whose firm the Majid Al Futtaim Group helped build modern Dubai, is one such example in the Gulf. Also, the new giga projects being set up in Saudi Arabia have attracted visionary CEOs with proven track records who were hired to drive new organizations and establish common goals. For larger established companies, let alone multinationals, this is more difficult. Large companies easily fragment because different units do different things, and personal incentives take over.

This does not mean that corporate culture does not shape management, as most CEOs reflect the dominant culture of their group. The CEOs that most employees fondly remember are ones who perfected the art of inspiring high performance without imposing a host of formal goals from the top. These firms are often copied by rivals because they gain a reputation of being able to motivate workers to look for common ground to act together. A CEO who is shaped by this inherent corporate culture will build a group that has a lasting ethos of service excellence and employee commitment.

CEOs may need to do several things in parallel. But above all, they have to work with the right leadership team, and as times change, mold the firm’s culture to these changes, while maintaining core principles that made the company great in the first place.

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