Measuring the cultural code of the firm: Theory, empirical evidence, and applications

The article presents an institutional approach to the study of corporate culture at the firm level. The study fills a gap arising from the lack of a systematic approach to measuring firm culture that would be comparable with macro-level models and take into account the specific features of the Russian business context. The paper provides a critical analysis of existing evolutionary and discrete methods for measuring corporate culture and describes a methodology for assessing a firm’s cultural code. It sets out the characteristics of the corporate culture model and the results of its testing in two large Russian companies. The article also discusses approaches to incorporating culture at the micro level. The findings demonstrate that the proposed methodology makes it possible to capture variation in cultural profiles both across industries and within firms, confirming the absence of a universal “ideal” type of culture and underscoring the importance of adapting culture to the specifics of a firm’s activities and to the formal institutions operating within the company.