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When It Comes to Culture, Does Your Company Walk the Talk?
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When It Comes to Culture, Does Your Company Walk the Talk?

Company practices often conflict with corporate values. Closing the gap starts with communication.

Donald Sull, Stefano Turconi and Charles Sull
MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020
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8

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Companies tout their core values and corporate culture on their websites and in CEO interviews. Does all that hype impress company insiders and employees? Donald Sull of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and his co-authors Stefano Turconi and Charles Sull considered the array of values corporations claim to embody and tried to match them with assessments from those companies’ employees. The results aren’t pretty; when it comes to corporate culture, employees aren’t always buying what their employers are trying to sell. 

Take-Aways

  • Businesses publicize their values and company culture to promote themselves to their workers, customers, clients and other stakeholders.
  • Corporate culture statements usually list three to seven values that guide a firm’s practices. The popularity of specific values varies across industries.
  • Researchers found no demonstrable positive connection between companies’ announced values and employees’ perception of how their employers practice those values.

About the Authors

Donald Sull, who teaches at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and Charles Sull are co-founders of CultureX, an AI platform for interpreting employee feedback. Stefano Turconi is a teaching fellow of strategy and entrepreneurship at London Business School.

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