Corporate Culture

Annual Review of Financial Economics, volume 14, issue 1, 2022[10.1146/annurev-financial-092321-124541]

41 Pages Posted: 24 Sep 2021 Last revised: 1 Dec 2024

See all articles by Gary B. Gorton

Gary B. Gorton

Yale School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Yale University - Yale Program on Financial Stability

Jillian Grennan

Emory University

Alexander Zentefis

Stanford University - Hoover Institution

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 22, 2021

Abstract

Corporate culture is an omnibus term that includes many elements like norms, values, knowledge, and customs that are relevant to a firm. Economists have made great progress recently in devising methods of measuring different aspects of corporate culture. These empirical measures of culture have explained mergers and acquisitions, corporate risk-taking, and unethical behaviors observed in corporations, among other topics. We argue that unpacking corporate culture into its components is the right way to research it empirically. Theories of corporate culture are still in development, and we discuss the major contributions thus far. We argue that a theory of the firm and of corporate decision-making that is based on corporate culture is more germane to the practical realities of firms’ inner workings than prevailing theories based on agency costs. Corporate culture has the potential to set the theoretical paradigm for all corporate finance research.

Keywords: corporate culture, firms, organizational behavior, corporate governance, corporate finance

JEL Classification: D23, G30, L22, M14

Suggested Citation

Gorton, Gary B. and Grennan, Jillian and Zentefis, Alexander, Corporate Culture (September 22, 2021). Annual Review of Financial Economics, volume 14, issue 1, 2022[10.1146/annurev-financial-092321-124541], Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3928972 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-financial-092321-124541

Gary B. Gorton (Contact Author)

Yale School of Management ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://mba.yale.edu/faculty/profiles/gorton.shtml

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
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Yale University - Yale Program on Financial Stability

165 Whitney Avenue
P.O. Box 208200
New Haven, CT 06520-8200
United States

Jillian Grennan

Emory University ( email )

Rich Memorial Building
1602 Fishburne Dr
Atlanta, GA 30307
United States

Alexander Zentefis

Stanford University - Hoover Institution ( email )

Stanford, CA 94305
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.alexanderkzentefis.com/

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