Convergence Matters

When employees’ views of the culture align, engagement and customer orientation benefit. by Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

From the Magazine (January–February 2018)

Summary.

When we compared employees’ views on their organization’s most salient cultural attributes, two types of organizations emerged: low convergence (employees rarely agreed on the most important cultural attributes) and high convergence (views were more closely aligned). In the two examples below, each dot represents one employee.

Read more on Business management or related topics Organizational culture and Change management

A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Boris Groysberg is a professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate at the school’s Race, Gender & Equity Initiative. He is the coauthor, with Colleen Ammerman, of Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021).

@bgroysberg

Jeremiah Lee leads a people and organizational analytics unit at Oliver Wyman. Formerly at Spencer Stuart, he and Jesse Price are cofounders of two culture-related businesses.

Jesse Price leads a people and organizational analytics at Oliver Wyman. Formerly at Spencer Stuart, he and Jeremiah Lee are cofounders of two culture-related businesses.

J. Yo-Jud Cheng is an assistant professor of business administration in the Strategy, Ethics and Entrepreneurship area at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Read more on Business management or related topics Organizational culture and Change management

Convergence Matters

Summary.

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