By Michael Goldstein, CPA, The CPA Journal

While firm culture has different meanings to various people, to me it is the totality of behavior patterns and thoughts characteristic of a firm's population--it's beliefs, institutions, and services--guiding each person in a position to enrich and enlarge the firm. It is not what a firm's partners and employees theorize the firm is, or what its public relations people would like everyone to believe it is; it is reality, the what is. Components of a firm's culture, favorable and unfavorable, include the attitude of senior partners toward--

* Dedication to Client Service--probably the most pervasive marketing exhortation common to professional firms. But did they really mean it?

* Quality--as it relates to client work, firm management, business development, or any combination of the three.

* Independence and Integrity--this means everybody.

* Growth...Increase the Size of the Practice--bigger is better, an obsession.

* Maximize the Firm's Capacity Utilization--increase profitability
by keeping everyone
busy, regardless at what realization.

* Compensating Growth--does this mean that the rainmakers (salespeople) always get to eat highest on the hog?

* A Partner Is a Part Owner and Not an Employee--even when the firm's structure more closely resembles a mega-corporate entity or in the smaller firm, even when the founding partner is still occupying an office?

* Teamwork--even if it interferes with posturing?

* Getting It Done Right the First Time--is it a lost art?

* Doing the Job for
Which You Are Best Suited--regardless of the compensation?

* Profession vs. Business--does it really matter?