MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Measuring Culture in Leading Companies

Culture Matters for Corporate Performance

To survive and thrive in today’s market, a healthy corporate culture is more important than ever. The MIT SMR/Glassdoor Culture 500 uses machine learning and human expertise to analyze culture using a data set of 1.2 million employee reviews on Glassdoor. This interactive tool offers previously untapped insights about the organizational culture of over 500 of the world’s leading companies and provides leaders with new tools for benchmarking culture in their own organizations.

Wells Fargo, then the third largest bank in the United States by assets, lost nearly $30 billion in market capitalization in a single day. The Federal Reserve had barred the bank from growing, as a penalty for opening more than 2 million accounts without authorization from customers.1 An investigation commissioned by the bank’s independent directors concluded that the root cause of the fraudulent behavior was the culture of the division whose employees opened the accounts.

About the Author

Donald Sull is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and cofounder of CultureX. Charles Sull is a cofounder of CultureX. Andrew Chamberlain is chief economist at Glassdoor.

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