Extracting organizational culture from text: the development and validation of a theory-driven tool for digital data

Abstract

ABSTRACT Understanding organizational culture and practices (OCPs) is crucial for business success, yet current assessments rely heavily on self-reports. We developed the “Dictionary of Organizational Culture and Practices”, the first theory-based text analysis tool designed to quantify OCPs as an alternative to surveys. Our approach integrates computational natural language processing with expert human judgement, using a 26 million words large corpus consisting of employee reviews of 526 companies, 1,121 mission and vision statements, and 285 company websites. We replicate Hofstede’s six-dimensional model of OCPs, not to be confused with Hofstede’s widely known model of national culture. Criterion validity is established by comparing our tool to existing ones that used data-driven approaches. Notably, our tool demonstrates construct validity through the striking similarity of the dimensional structure with survey-based measures. The level of alignment varied depending on the type of text, with congruence coefficients exceeding .9. Our findings offer valuable insights for academics and managers seeking to understand and shape an organization’s culture more effectively.