The Power of Unity
Abstract
Sopra Steria is one of Norway’s leading consulting businesses. For several years, they have been at the top of the prestigious Great Place to Work rankings. Considering the change in the external environment, their size of over 3000 employees, and their new direction of establishing smaller “district” offices. The thesis strives to answer the question: “How does Sopra Steria create a feeling of unity among their employees?”. By examining the employees experience and perception of organisational culture, norms, interpersonal relations, judgement and decision-making, we explore factors underlying their success in creating an attractive workplace.
This study uses a creative qualitative approach combined with Prisoners Dilemma simulations, and semi-structured interviews on 29 employees at Sopra Steria. The findings suggests that morale, experience, climate, regulations, and values contribute to a higher feeling of unity among Sopra Steria’s employees. Being an inductive theory building study, we put forward two propositions for further research into organisational and individual attributes can result in either higher or lower levels of unity and knowledge sharing in organisations.