Read the following case and respond to the questions below in your own words:
GOLDMAN SACHS
How long would you want to work for this company? Its headquarters is a 43-story glass tower on the Hudson River in New York, complete with a huge fitness center offering 70 classes per week. Its cafeteria includes rotating selections from some of Manhattan’s top restaurants, along with the typical fare. Plus, it offers a compressed work week, job sharing, and the ability to work from home (indeed, 30 percent of its employees do so on any given day). Is that sounding pretty good? Well, you should also know that the workweeks will be 70 to 80 hours, which is par for the course in the industry. And you might not want to have an “off day” because you’ll be working alongside the best and brightest—others who’ve survived a grueling hiring process with up to 30 interviewers and an “acceptance rate” lower than Harvard’s.
The company, of course, is Goldman Sachs, the 144-year old investment bank with over 13,000 employees worldwide. The trick for Goldman is to retain its talent, even in the face of demanding workweeks and even given the marketability of its overachievers. How does it do that? Well, for one, Goldman provides good economic reasons for employees to stay. The average compensation across its employees is $380,000, with Goldman prioritizing pay more than most competitors. And that’s leaving aside the perks which—in addition to the above—include a high-profile speaker series and a champion dragon-boating team. Of course, you may need that salary to pay for one of the perks, as the cafeteria pricing is based on demand. Eat during the noon rush and it’ll be a bit pricier! What would you expect from an investment bank?
But the reasons to stay at Goldman transcend economics. There’s a collaborative culture within the company that encourages bonds among employees. There are more than 80 “affinity networks” that help them connect with people of similar interests, background, and circumstances. Employees also collaborate on important volunteering projects run by nonprofits. “The culture of collaboration is not just a myth,” explains one Goldman employee. What’s more, the same hiring process that results in talented people results in people you’d want to work alongside. Explains CEO Lloyd Blankfein, “You don’t have to be the smartest person, but it’s probably the highest combination of smart and interesting and interested-in-the-world kind of people.”
When Goldman moved into its shiny new headquarters, it was only months removed from accepting a $10 billion bailout from the U.S. government as part of the Toxic Asset Relief Program. Although Goldman repaid the debt the following year, its role in the financial crisis that triggered the Great Recession had been crystallized. That role was summed up most forcefully in a scathing Rolling Stone article that began, “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”
Regardless of how valid the criticisms of Goldman were, its role in the financial crisis had an impact on its reputation—in the eyes of both the public and its employees. Indeed, applications for open positions declined in the years following the bailout. After all, few graduating students aspire to work for a “great vampire squid.” Still, Goldman seems to have weathered the storm. Those inside Goldman point to its collaborative culture as a steeling force that helped it weather the crisis. Says John Rogers, an executive vice-president, “I will always believe that the culture was one of the most important factors in getting us through the crisis.” CEO Lloyd Blankfein agrees, noting, “I think of the culture as the operating system…Our culture is what allowed us to reprogram ourselves. . . .The operating system was intact.”
Goldman has also gotten more aggressive in image advertising—marketing that focuses on the company’s brand itself, rather than specific products and services. It launched a national branding campaign around the slogan “Progress is everyone’s business.” It also created more of a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Rogers describes the efforts like this: “There was a conversation that was taking place about Goldman Sachs, and we had the option to either be a part of it or not be a part of it. We had seen the effect of not being a part of it.”
Sources: A. Vandermey, “Yes, Goldman Sachs Really Is a Great Place to Work,” Fortune, February 3, 2014; M. Taibbi, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” Rolling Stone, April 5, 2010.
3.1 If you were working in a company that struggled through a crisis like Goldman’s, how exactly would that experience harm your organizational commitment? Would the impact be felt most intensely with affective, continuance, or normative commitment?
3.2 Are there ways in which such a crisis could strengthen your organizational commitment? Which form (or forms) would be strengthened?
3.3 How sensitive do you think you are to corporate image, whether when applying for jobs or staying with an employer? Do you think image advertising is capable of helping with these sorts of issues? Why or why not?