Netflix Organizational Culture: an overview

Netflix organizational culture integrates the following five key elements:

1. Encouraging decision-making by employees. The entertainment services provider encourages employees at all levels to take initiative and resolve issues on their own with minimum input from their superiors. Decision making at the on-demand media provider is made by individuals, referred to informed captains, rather than by teams or committees. Informed captains are experts in their area who listen to the viewpoints of other people and then make decisions on their own. Thanks to this principle Netflix doesn’t have to wait for consensus or vote by the committee and this is huge advantage taking into account highly dynamic nature of the external environment.

2. Sharing information openly, broadly and deliberately. Netflix has taken a radical approach towards information sharing. The largest streaming service in the world maintains online memos in narrative form for members of board of directors that not only include links to supporting analysis but also allow open access to all data and information on the company’s internal shared systems. This is unprecedented for a global corporation.

Unlike, some other tech companies such as Apple, employees at all levels of the streaming service have access to all internal information. Access to data helps Netflix employees to make more informed decision making. Moreover, thanks to the access to information employees feel trusted and become more responsible at their job.

3. Communicating candidly and directly. Openness in communication is one of the pillars of Netflix organizational culture. Candid and direct communication also relates employee performance feedback. Openness has been ingrained into the culture of Netflix to such a degree that not speaking up one’s mind can be easily perceived as an act of disloyalty.

4. Keeping only our highly effective people. The streaming service models itself on being a professional sports team, not a family. The company argues that a family is about unconditional love. A dream team, on the other hand, is about pushing oneself to be the best possible teammate, caring intensely about the team, and knowing that one may not be on the team forever.

5. Avoiding rules. The entertainment services provider adheres to its core philosophy of people over process and this philosophy is central to Netflix corporate culture. As such the company avoids bureaucracy in various business processes and instead relies on the intuition and judgement of its workforce.

Netflix Inc. Report contains the above analysis of Netflix organizational culture. The report illustrates the application of the major analytical strategic frameworks in business studies such as SWOT, PESTEL, Porter’s Five Forces, Value Chain analysis, Ansoff Matrix and McKinsey 7S Model on Netflix. Moreover, the report contains analyses of Netflix leadership, organizational structure and business strategy. The report also comprises discussions of Netflix marketing strategy, ecosystem and addresses issues of corporate social responsibility.