Valence in Organizational Culture: Cultural Alignment, Employee Satisfaction, and Market Performan

Abstract

Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings includes abstracts of all papers and symposia presented at the annual conference, plus 6-page abridged versions of the “Best Papers” accepted for inclusion in the program (approximately 10%). Papers published in the Proceedings are abridged because presenting papers at their full length could preclude subsequent journal publication. Please contact the author(s) directly for the full papers. Valence in Organizational Culture: Cultural Alignment, Employee Satisfaction, and Market PerformanMelody Chang, Balazs Kovacs and Amanda SharkeyMelody ChangYale School of ManagementYale School of ManagementU. Of Chicago, Balazs KovacsYale School of ManagementYale School of ManagementU. Of Chicago and Amanda SharkeyYale School of ManagementYale School of ManagementU. Of ChicagoPublished Online:9 Jul 2018https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2018.10844abstractAboutSections ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AbstractPrior research has emphasized the importance of a ""strong culture"" for firm performance, defining cultural strength on the basis of employee agreement about the beliefs, norms and values that are prized by a firm. We refine the established notion of ""strong culture"" by proposing that ""strong"" cultures encompass two possibilities: (i) having a high level of alignment in what employees describe as positive aspects of culture and (ii) having a high level of alignment in what employees describe as negative aspects of culture. We argue that these two types of cultural strength differently impact how employees evaluate their organizations and how the market anticipates the future performance of these organizations. We adopt a language-based model to measure cultural alignment among employees using over 100,000 unique employee reviews of 816 publicly traded firms across different industries on the Glassdoor website, an online career intelligence platform. Consistent with our theoretical arguments, we find that greater agreement on what employees consider as positive aspects of culture is positively associated with employee satisfaction and market performance. We also find that a higher level of agreement on what employees deem negative aspects of culture portends devaluation of an organization by its employees and by the stock market. Additionally, we find that agreement on negative cultural attributes, compared to agreement on positive cultural attributes, has a greater impact on employees' and the market's evaluation of organizations. We offer insights for managerial practice by suggesting that focusing on eliminating negative aspects of culture that employees agree on will have a greater payoff than focusing on boosting agreement about positive aspects. Contributions to the organizational culture literature are discussed.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 2018, No. 1 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 9 July 2018 Published in print 1 August 2018 InformationCopyright of Academy of Management Proceedings is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. The Academy of Management does not maintain the full text version of papers presented at the Academy's meetings. Please contact the author(s) directly to obtain access to the full text content.KeywordsAOM Annual Meeting Proceedings 2018AOM Chicago 2018