Corporate culture can make a difference in whether a company succeeds or fails, Harvard Business School professor Dennis Campbell said during a presentation at the June 23 State of the Art Jewelry Summit in Cambridge, Mass.
Campbell defined a company’s culture as the values it uses to guide its behavior as well as “the pattern of behavior that is reinforced.”
“When you have a strong, healthy culture, it helps you execute strategy,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how good your strategy is, if you don’t have the right culture, you can erode that.”
Research has shown that “when we examine cultures, on Glassdoor and other [employment] sites, what we think of as strong culture organizations tend to exhibit better ROI, net income, sales growth, cash flow on average,” Campbell said. “They tend to be better performers, and they tend to stay that way.”
He said companies need to ask themselves: “What are you core values? Are they widely shared?”
Often, culture manifests as priorities, he said, giving Southwest Airlines as an example. “It puts employees first, customers second, investors third. They commit to not laying off employees that are essential to their business, and they did it even during COVID, when they were running out of money.”
And it’s paid off: For the past 43 years, Southwest has been the most consistently profitable U.S. airline.
The best companies give employees a “sense of psychological safety,” Campbell added. “No matter what your culture is, people have to feel safe to challenge the consensus.”
Ultimately, a company’s culture is set from the top. “When a company needs to shift its culture, that’s often a board-level decision,” said Campbell. “The board will decide, ‘We need a different CEO.’”
The daylong summit, held at Harvard’s Mineralogical & Geological Museum, was presented by the museum, the Responsible Jewellery Council, and GIA.
(Photo: Getty Images)
Follow JCK on Instagram: @jckmagazineFollow JCK on Twitter: @jckmagazine
Follow JCK on Facebook: @jckmagazine
