MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How to Make Culture a Strategic Imperative: Cummins CHRO Marvin Boakye

At industrial giant Cummins, leaders see company culture as a strategic differentiator. The company’s HR chief shares how distinctive leadership behaviors contribute.

“We have a very long-tenured board member who said to me, ‘Every company has a culture, whether they know it or not. Very, very few companies have an intentional culture,’” says Marvin Boakye, the chief human resources officer at Cummins.

Few companies are more intentional than Cummins about building and maintaining the corporate culture. The multinational has been producing diesel engines and integrated power systems for over a century, ranks in the top 150 of the Fortune 500, and has generated significantly higher returns on invested capital than its industry peers for the past five years. In our research, Cummins ranked first among 39 large industrial companies in terms of how employees rated its culture and values on Glassdoor.

About the Author

Donald Sull (@culturexinsight) is a professor of the practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a cofounder of CultureX. Charles Sull is a cofounder of CultureX.

Learn more about MIT SMR.