Accenture

Report written by

Heli Lindqvist, Ismayil Önder, Judit Sa’nta,
Sabrina D. Pick, Stefan Gabriëls

Subject

Accenture’s Cultural Dimensions

Accenture’s Cultural Dimensions

Contents

1 Basic Information ‘Accenture’

2 Power Distance

2.1 Hierarchy

2.2 Promotion

3 Being vs. doing

4 Individualism or group?

5 Uncertainty avoidance

6 Femininity/ Masculinity

6.1 Masculinity

6.2 Femininity

7 Time

8 Conclusion

APPENDIX

Accenture’s Cultural Dimensions

1 Basic Information ‘Accenture’

Accenture has its origins in the Arthur Andersen Group. One branch of the Andersen Group was Andersen Consulting. In the 1980’s this branch broke up from the rest of the company. In 2001, after Andersentook part in the Enron scandal Andersen Consulting had to change its name. They launched a competition to get a new name for the consulting company. It was a Danish employee who thought about their company giving an accent on the future. That’s how Accenture was established.

Accenture is a global company that delivers consulting, outsourcing and technology services. Their goal is to help their clients to improve their business, performance and government. The company operates in northern and southern America, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Accenture consists of five different operating groups which are

  • Communications & High Tech
  • Financial Services
  • Port & Public Services
  • Products
  • Resources

Accenture is focused on working with large projects and large companies. There are a few medium-sized companies they are working with but that is rather seldom. Some examples of their big customers are BMW and Deutsche Bank. They have 87 companies on the global Fortune 100 list as their clients.

Accenture has almost 100.000 employees in 48 countries. The revenue in 2003 was 11.8 billion US-Dollars. The CEO of Accenture is William D. Green.

2 Power Distance

Accenture has a high hierarchy structure. But the culture is very open, so it is easy for people in different levels to communicate with each other. In a project, a person on the highest level takes the responsibility. If there is more than one on this level, the most experienced person is on lead.

2.1 Hierarchy

New employees start in the company as Analysts,usually they have just finished university. A person works as an analyst for 2 or 3 years. Tasks for analysts consist of research, presentations and training. If you have working experience from another company, you can possibly start on the next level.

After that it’s common to get promoted as a Consultant. Consultants lead teams and they have some responsibility. After three years being a consultant, you usually get promoted depending on your performance.

The next stage is Manager, who leadsthe projects and also does other management related tasks. Senior Managers have worked as managers from three to five years. They mainly focus on sales jobs.

The highest level in the company is Associate Partner or Partner. They try to get new customers, but it is not easy to get promoted to this level.

2.2 Promotion

People are evaluated by their performance once a year. They are ranked by their performance, and approximately 25 % of them get promoted. The percentage of promoted people depends on the economical situation.

The company has a so called “upper out principle” which means that you have a certain time available wherein you should be promoted. If a person doesn’t get promoted during this time, the person usually wants to find a new career path.

3 Being vs. doing

The analysts do the traditional work. They do all the research, and are not in charge of anything. In the company’s open culture analysts can give their opinions and suggestions.

The whole company really is all about “doing”, your background doesn’t matter. This originates from the American roots of the company.

For example people recruited are expected to have some kind of degree. But it doesn’t matter if it’s from university or from polytechnic.

4 Individualism or group?

Teamwork is really important for Accenture because it’s all about projects. They gather together teams for certain projects. When a project ends, they normally have a new project with a totally different team. The projects can last from a few weeks to a couple of years.You have different responsibilities within a team. If you make a mistake you should immediately tell your team about that and try to solve it.

You only succeed as a team, but it is also important to develop and improve your personal skills. One category of your personal ranking is about being a value creator. The other two categories are about successful business projects and people development. So you have to have good skills in individualand group work.

5 Uncertainty avoidance

In a company, like Accenture, you have to be ready for some kind of uncertainty. You never know about future projects in advance. Usually the time is only a few weeks earlier. It might even happen that you have to leave your home country.

On the other hand you can ask for some time off if you need to for your personal purposes, like when you are having a child. This is the way the company rewards its employees for handling uncertainty.

Another way of rewarding their employees is to offer them trainings. In the annual performance interview you reflect your performances and you also set goals. If your annual budget and your career counsellor agrees you can participate in training.

6 Femininity/ Masculinity

In Accenture you will find more men than women. This is because of the strong influence of the IT- sector. In Europe you will find a similar division in schools studying that branch. But in Accenture, as well as in schools, there are more women dealing with for example Human Resources matters.

6.1 Masculinity

There are a few points that make Accenture appear to be more masculine than feminine. For example there is a big sympathy for the winners, you win when you succeed in your work and this way you get promoted. Competition is very important for Accenture, they are always looking for ambitious employees.

6.2 Femininity

Accenture has a really open way of communicating. Therefore the employees especially like to work for their company and also because they can call each other by their first name from the beginning on.

Within projects they normally make group decisions, although there is one person who takes the responsibility.If something is going wrong you can always talk about that. If a problem occurs in your project team and you do not feel comfortable with speaking up directly to your team members you have the possibility to ask your mentor for support.

Accenture considers it important to socialize even after work. They have different communities based on the operating groups. Typically project teams hold meetings every Friday where they chat and discuss in more informal way. They also offer parties but this depends on the economical situation.

7 Time

Accenture expects their employees to work long hours. They have to be aware that it might happen that they have to work up to 70 hours a week. The basic working time is 40 hours a week. Generally, everybody has to work more hours when they get closer to the end of a project.

A new project is only announced a short time in advance, which means that they start planning the details when the project has started. The projects last from a few weeks to several years. After each project the employees are supposed to relax for a little while. They do not have to work as hard asat the end of the project.

If you have personal goals i.e. reaching a PhD, Accenture will do its best to grant you some flexibility. Or like the company says: “If there is a way, the way will be found”. But getting free timereally depends on the project that you had joined. And of course the time you ask for itbeforehand is important as well.The employees have to focus on the future and need to be able to adapt easily to changes.

8 Conclusion

Accenture is a world-wide company that gives you lots of opportunities. Whether or not your carrier will be successful depends on your performance. The company supports you as much as possible. After you leave the firm you will have excellent references for making career in another company. The culture of Accenture also recommends giving feedback. Each manager can decide on his own if and how hewill handle it.

The projects do not necessarily contain team members from the same country,a lot of the time you will have to work together with people from different nationalities. The employees don’t get special intercultural training but when problems occur they can ask their mentor or even a Human Resources Representative for support.

Finally, if you are interested in open communication, an individual approach, team work, changing tasks and international experiences, Accenture is a great company to work for.

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Intercultural Management

APPENDIX

Introduction teambuilding

In this report we would like to give you a short feedback about our experiences during 2 weeks on an intensive, intercultural course (Bridge Across Cultures) in Aschaffenburg, Germany. It was a great opportunity for everyone to get to know better the differences between cultures. It was also a very good opportunity to improve our language skills and make new friendships.

The students

The past 2 weeks we worked in a multicultural group with one Hungarian, one Dutch, one German, one Belgian and also one Finnish person.

StudentCountrySchoolEducation

Ismayil ÖnderTheNetherlandsSaxionInternational Marketing

Judit Sa´ntaHungarianPSZF Finances

Sabrina PickGermanyFHHBusiness Administration

Heli LindqvistFinlandLaureaBusiness

Administration

Stefan GabriëlsBelgiumHSGentApplied Informatics

About the course

The first day, Sunday the 7th of November, we met each other. We were divided into different groups and the same night we tried to get to know each other better. Everybody introduced her or himself and we made an appointment to meet each other on the next day at the first lesson. At the first sight everybody seemed very shy, but during the days we opened to each other. Marleen taught us how to use meeting techniques. On the same day, Ildiko taught us how to handle with cultural dimensions. This was a very interesting lesson, because on that moment we didn’t know exactly how to handle with each others culture. On Tuesday the same teachers taught us again and we learned how to communicate with different cultures and they told us about team roles and how we could use these.

On Wednesday, Romy told us how we can improve our interpersonal skills. After that we had a class with Harry about safety and security. This lesson was not as interesting as the others. The problem was that we didn’t have enough time. Harry had to present his 4 hours presentation in 1 hour. We also had an interesting day on Friday with Kristina and Ad about how to negotiate with different groups and different cultures. We were dealing very well until the teachers gave the others details about the case. So we couldn’t come to a final deal. OnMonday the 15th, Rogier taught us how to bea successful, international business person. Everyday the groups were mixed up and we think that this was a very good idea, because we could work in different groups.

In our opinion the best parts of the days were the nights. We could socialize and had every night very nice programs like country presentations and country events. We think that everybody enjoyed these programs. Our favorite was the survival game. We werewarned that the survival game would be very hard. But in reality it was not, because we worked very well as a team. We also had a very good time on Saturday and Sunday when we had a tour in Miltenberg withan afternoon of wine tasting.The Bavarian Culture Night activity was also very interesting.

Positives

In this part we would like to give you positive examples about our experiences, achievements and the main lessons we learnt within our group.

  • We learned a lot about different cultures
  • We learned to respect different cultures
  • There are not as much stereotypes as before
  • How to negotiate
  • How to use oral and body language
  • How to express ourselves
  • Presentation techniques and how to use them
  • Business meeting techniques and how to use them in different situations
  • How to get and stay selfconfident
  • How to clean up your room
  • How to handle problems with each other (Elke)
  • How to deal with problems like discrimination and prejudices
  • We also learned how to discuss and to be more open and flexible
  • We supported each other to come to these conclusions
  • Last but not least: HOW TO MAKE PARTY AND A LOT OF FUN WITH PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

Negatives

In this part we would like to give you some examples of the rather uncommon negative things that we experienced during our course.

  • The tasks that were given during the lessons were not always clear. Sometimes we had to wait and ask for more information.
  • Many times we wasted a lot of time because we had different opinions and it was sometimes hard to make a final decision.
  • Once in a while the schedule was too busy, so that we got more tired as a group, so it became difficult to pay a lot of attention.
  • During the course we made appointments,but some of uswere a few times late,so we couldn’t start working.
  • We only had one laptop, so we lost a bit of efficiency.
  • The folder we were given was not that clear and it was also difficult to find specific topics because of the numbering of the pages and some chapters were missing (no index).
  • We also didn’t have enough free time to socialize. We only could go to the bar during night time.

Conclusion

After all we have to agree on one point, that this course was a great course! We were able to solve every problem that came up, so we really could work together as a team. We agreed almost on everything, so we didn’t have any big problems while discussing. We hope also that this course will go on in the future, because we believe that other students should be able to experience this kind of education as well. Unfortunately we felt homesicksometimes but everybody was very supporting (including the teachers),so right now we don’t want to go home anymore! The next sentence of our group member, Judit, will show how great it was. She said to the Dutch guys: ´I will miss your noise`!

After all, we really had a great time and we learned a lot from each other.

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AschaffenburgBridge Across Cultures 2004