Strong Corporate Culture: Who Should Define It?

The Research: Why a Strong Corporate Culture Matters
Decades of corporate culture assessment research consistently point to one conclusion: few drivers of performance rival the impact of corporate culture. Culture isn’t the slogans hanging in hallways or the aspirational statements tucked into an onboarding packet. It is the lived reality — the unwritten rules that determine how people think, act, collaborate, and make trade-offs when no one is watching.

When that cultural fabric is intentionally aligned with strategic priorities, the results are profound. Culture becomes an accelerant — a force multiplier that turns strategic intent into sustained performance.

• The global consulting firm Watson Wyatt found that culturally aligned organizations return almost 300% more value to stakeholders. We have found a strong corporate culture is a competitive advantage.
• Our own organizational alignment research at 410 companies across 8 industries found cultural factors account for 40% of the difference between high and low performing companies in terms of:

• • Revenue growth
  • Profitability
  • Customer satisfaction and retention
  • Leadership effectiveness
  • Employee engagement

Who is Really in Charge of Defining the Culture at Work?
When we ask organizations, we gat a wide range of answers.  About one-third say it is HR because they are responsible for implementing the policies and programs that shape the employee experience.  Another third feel it should be the leadership team because they set the tone and direction through their words and actions.  The final third believe that it should be employees themselves because they live, express, and reinforce the culture every single day.

The answer is rarely simple — and that’s precisely the problem.

HR often believes they are the stewards of workplace culture, responsible for creating the systems and structures that define “how things get done.” Managers typically look upward, assuming that culture flows from the top — that it’s the executive team’s job to define and model the organization’s norms and values. Meanwhile, employees — especially younger generations — often feel ownership over what the culture truly is, since they experience it firsthand in their daily interactions.

Each group is partly right — and yet, when ownership is fragmented, culture becomes inconsistent, reactive, and fragile. HR may draft the policies, leadership may proclaim the vision, but if employees don’t buy in and embody the values, the culture remains theoretical. Conversely, when employees try to shape the culture without clear alignment from leadership, the result is confusion and contradiction.

In reality, a strong corporate culture is co-created.

• Leadership sets the strategic direction and cultural boundaries.
• HR designs and aligns the framework.
• Employees bring it to life.

When all three are aligned — when what’s said by leadership matches what’s supported by HR and lived by employees — culture stops being an abstract concept and becomes a powerful organizational force.

Steps to Take to Co-Create Your Culture
Corporate culture isn’t sustained through slogans or single initiatives — it’s maintained through visible, purposeful, and disciplined consistency.  Here’s what to do:

1. Get Aligned at the Top
   Project postmortem data tells us that without executive team alignment on the kind of culture you need to execute your business and talent strategies, you will most likely have teams pulling in opposite directions.  Start by creating a clear business strategy and defining the cultural dimensions required to fuel it.
2. Identify Culture-Strategy Gaps
   Assess your current corporate culture to identify the key gaps between your current and desired cultures.  This will help prioritize the critical few cultural shifts required to set your strategy and your people up for success.
3. Actively Involve Key Stakeholders in Closing the Gaps
   Change management training data confirms that actively involving key stakeholders in culture change  has the greatest impact on employee buy-in and commitment.  Bring key stakeholders together to create pragmatic plans to close the most important strategy-culture gaps.  The goal is to ensure that you have enough cultural health, accountability, and strategic alignment to get where you want to go in a way that makes sense.
4. Measure Progress and Adjust
   Sustaining culture doesn’t mean keeping it frozen in time. Strong cultures evolve without losing their core. Leaders must continually assess: “Does our culture still support our strategy?” When market conditions shift, when new generations enter the workforce, or when the company scales rapidly, the culture must flex. The key is to preserve the corporate values that define the organization’s character while letting outdated and ineffective norms fade.

The Bottom Line
A strong corporate culture emerges when the organizational values, leadership behaviors, employee experiences, and strategic intent converge. Every decision, business practice, and leader behavior should reinforce the culture you want to keep. When values are authentic, systems are aligned, and employees feel genuine ownership, culture becomes self-sustaining — a living asset that drives engagement, performance, and trust long into the future.

To learn more about creating a strong corporate culture to help your business and people thrive, download The 3 Research-Backed Areas Required to Create a High Performance Culture