1
The Value of Corporate Culture*
Luigi Guiso
Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance & CEPR
Paola Sapienza
Northwestern University, NBER, & CEPR
Luigi Zingales
University of Chicago, NBER, & CEPR
September 2013
Abstract
We study which dimensions of corporate culture are related to a firm’s performance and why. We find
that proclaimed values appear irrelevant. Yet, when employees perceive top managers as trustworthy
and ethical, firm’s performance is stronger. We then study how different governance structures impact
the ability to sustain integrity as a corporate value. We find that publicly traded firms are less able to
sustain it. Traditional measures of corporate governance do not seem to have much of an impact.
* We thank the Great Place to Work Institute for sharing the data with us. We also thank Amy Lyman of the Great Place To
Work Institute for clarifying many doubts about the data and for many and very useful comments. We are grateful to David
Kreps and to participants at the NBER Conference on the Causes and Consequences of Corporate Culture and the MOVE
workshop on Social Economics, Barcelona for helpful comments. We also thank two anonymous referees for their remarks
and suggestions that have improved the paper considerably. Luigi Guiso gratefully acknowledges financial support from
PEGGED, Paola Sapienza from the Zell Center for Risk and Research at Kellogg School of Management, and Luigi Zingales
from the Stigler Center and the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. We also
thank Cecilia Gamba, Lanny Lang, and Simone Lenzu for excellent research assistantship and Shastri Sandy for providing us
the institutional ownership’s data.
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Introduction
Resigning from Goldman Sachs, vice president Greg Smith wrote in a very controversial New York
Times op-ed: “Culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around
teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the
secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years.” He then
adds “I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love
working for this firm for many years.” In his follow-up book, Greg Smith seems to blame the demise of
Goldman Sachs’s culture to its transformation from a partnership to a publicly traded company.
While highly disputed by the company1
, Greg Smith’s remarks raise several important questions.
What constitutes a firm’s culture? How can we measure it? Does this culture – however defined and
measured -- impact a firm’s success? If so, why? And how can different governance structures enable or
curtail the formation and preservation of a value-enhancing culture? In this paper we try to answer these
questions.
Whether culture was Goldman’s secret sauce or not, Goldman certainly went out of the way to
advertise it. The first page of its IPO prospectus was enumerating the “Business Principles”, including
“Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business.” Yet, in this regard Goldman is not unique.
When we look at companies’ web pages, we find that 85% of the S&P 500 companies have a section
(sometimes even two) dedicated to -- what they call – “corporate culture”, i.e. principles and values that
should inform the behavior of all firms’ employees. The value we find more commonly advertised is
innovation (mentioned by 80% of them), followed by integrity and respect (70%). When we try to
correlate the frequency and prominence of these values to measures of short and long term performance,
however, we fail to find any significant correlation. Thus, advertised values do not seem to be very
important, possibly because it is easy to claim them, so everybody does. Thus, is there another, more
meaningful way, to measure values?
To this purpose we use a novel dataset created by the Great Place to Work®
Institute (GPTWI),
which conducts extensive surveys of the employees of more than 1,000 U.S. firms. While only the list of
the best100 firms to work for is publicly disclosed, we have access to the full database. The advantage of
this database is that it measures how values are perceived by employees, rather than how they are
1
Despite Smith’s claims, Goldman Sachs remains one of the top 100 Best Companies to work for according to the average
opinion of the employees surveyed by GPTWI
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advertised by the firm. In particular, there are two questions in the survey that measure the level of
integrity of management as perceived by the employees.
When we use these measures we find that high levels of perceived integrity are positively
correlated with good outcomes, in terms of higher productivity, profitability, better industrial relations,
and higher level of attractiveness to prospective job applicants. These effects are also economically
relevant: a one standard deviation increase in integrity is associated with a 0.19 standard deviation
increase in Tobin’s Q, a 0.09 standard deviation increase in profitability, and a 0.24 standard deviation
decline in the fraction of workers that are unionized.
Since these statements are part of a longer survey instrument, we are concerned that there might
be some “halo” effect, which might contaminate all the answers. In companies that pay more, for
example, employees may tend to be happier and all the answers may tend to be more positive. To
address this problem, we use as controls responses to questions that, though containing the halo effect,
in theory are orthogonal to the integrity question, such as the answers to statements like “This is a
physically safe place to work” or “I can be myself around here”. The correlation of integrity with
positive outcomes survives these controls.
While these correlations do not prove causation, they suggest that companies’ obsession with
corporate culture might be justified, as some models have tried to capture. In O’Reilly (1989) and Kreps
(1990), corporate culture is considered relevant because employees face choices that cannot be properly
regulated ex ante. Thus, corporate culture acts as a constraint. In Erhard et al (2007), adherence to
integrity acts as a commitment not to engage in economic calculations. In this way, for example, an
employee will not trade off customers’ satisfaction for larger profits today. Thus, maintaining a culture
of integrity can have some short term costs (the forgone profit today), but also long-term benefits.
If a culture of integrity is valuable, why do some firms end up losing it? We know from Edmans
(2011) that firms included in the 100 “best firms to work for” (as measured by the GPTW ranking) tend
to have a higher future abnormal stock market returns. Since integrity and trust play a role in the
determination of being named one of the 100 Best, we can interpret this result as saying that the market
initially underestimates the value of the integrity capital and only over time – as the profits come in –
appreciates its value.
If this is true, it might be value maximizing (at least in the short term) for publicly traded firms to
underinvest in integrity capital. To test this hypothesis, we analyze whether ceteris paribus publicly
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traded firms in the GPTW dataset have a lower value of integrity (as measured by the survey responses)
than privately held ones. We find this to be the case, even after controlling for industry, geography, size,
and labor force composition. Public firms have an integrity value that is 0.21 standard deviations below
similar firms that are private.
Not all firms see their integrity drop when they go public. Venture capital-backed firms do not
seem to experience any drop. This different outcome might be the result of a longer horizon generated
by the presence of a large shareholder or by a better organizational design made by professional
founders.
To disentangle these hypotheses, we test whether the presence of a large shareholder or other
corporate governance characteristics affect the level of integrity capital. We find that the only corporate
governance characteristic that is statistically significant is the presence of large shareholder (at least 5%
ownership share), yet it has a negative correlation with the level of integrity. Thus, it looks like a focus
towards shareholders value maximization undermines the ability of a company to sustain a high level of
integrity capital.
The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. Section 1 introduces the theoretical background of the
analysis. Section 2 describes the set of values advertised by S&P 500 companies. Section 3 presents the
main data used. Section 4 discusses how we deal with the econometric problems created by a potential
halo effect. Section 5 presents the correlation between integrity and firm’s performance measures.
Section 6 explores the relation between integrity and several governance variables. Section 7 concludes.
1. Theoretical Framework
1.1 Definition of corporate culture
There are several definitions of corporate culture. One view (see for example, Cremer 1993) is that
culture represents the unspoken code of communication among members of an organization. A related
view is that culture is a convention that helps coordination, like which side of the road we drive on. The
managerial literature focuses on the notion of culture as "a set of norms and values that are widely
shared and strongly held throughout the organization" (O'Reilly and Chatman (1996)). In this literature
the function played by culture is that of “social control.” According to O’Reilly (1989), most individuals
care about the people who surround them. Thus, if we share a common set of expectations with the
people we work with, we are under their control whenever we are in their presence. In this respect,
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culture complements more traditional control systems, such as incentives. This notion is close to Kreps
(1990) and Erhard et al (2007), who emphasize one particular value: integrity, defined as “the quality or
state of being complete; in an unbroken condition; sound.”
We choose to use the O'Reilly and Chatman (1996) definition for two reasons. First, this
definition is similar to the one now prevailing in neoclassical economic models that use culture (e.g.,
Guiso et al (2008) and (2010) and Tabellini (2008)). Second, this value component of culture is easier to
measure and thus facilitates our empirical task.
However, there is a difference in the way these values can be interpreted. In Kreps (1990),
corporate values are simply the reputation that a company has developed over time. Thus, corporate
culture does not change the preferences of individuals; it only alters their incentives in a repeated game.
By contrast, in Hodgson (1996) a corporate culture is able to modify the preferences of individuals and
induce them to internalize some norms.
1.2 Why culture might matter
To study the potential effect of culture, we need to be clear on why this culture might matter.
Both in O’Reilly (1989) and Kreps (1990), culture is considered relevant because employees will face
choices that cannot be properly regulated ex ante.
Think about a firm with a reputation for impeccable customer-care. Both managers and
employees are tempted to save on the effort necessary to provide the best care. Offering the best effort is
costly and the probability of being detected is minimal, especially if the shirking is only partial: it is hard
to prove that the care was only slightly subpar. Furthermore, the negative consequences of a reduced
reputation will not be felt right away. One bad episode can hardly destroy a long-standing reputation of
excellence. Hence, without the proper motivation, managers and employees are likely to skimp on the
quality of their services.
Even if the board anticipates this problem, it is hard to design the proper incentive contracts. The
observable outcome (reputation vis-à-vis the customers) is slow moving and small violations are
difficult to detect. How can a firm sustain a reputation of impeccable service?
A solution is to raise impeccable service to the level of a “value” that needs to be respected at all
times, not a goal that is traded off against other goals. The advantage of elevating this principle to the
level of value is threefold. First, by advertising it as a company’s value a firm is more likely to attract
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and retain people who share this value or -- at the very minimum – have a lower cost to live and operate
by this value. Second, by promoting top customer service as a value it makes it clear to the employees
that the company accepts no compromises on this front: it is a commitment not to engage in economic
calculations. In this way, for example, an employee will not trade off the customer satisfaction with a
larger profit.
Finally, promoting top customer service as a value facilitates its establishment as a norm inside
the firm. The enforcement of social norms differs in several ways with respect to the enforcement of
legal norms. To be enforceable, legal contingencies need to be verifiable in court. By contrast, it is
sufficient that a contingency be observable for a social norm to be enforceable. An employee with a
negative attitude towards customers can hardly be sanctioned in court, but he can easily be shunned by
colleagues. Precisely because the judgment and the punishment are administered by the community, not
by a court of law, social norms should be very coarse, so that the detection of a violation is relatively
easy.
Last but not least, for a social norm to be enforced it must be shared by most people in a
community. In particular, in a firm it must be shared and followed by who is at the top. This is really a
case of “lead by example.”
Social norms have typically less enforcement power than legal norms. A violation of a legal
norm can lead to harsh punishments, such as incarceration and (in some countries) even to death. The
violation of a social norm leads to lesser consequences, such as ostracism from the community. In spite
of this limited punishment, social norms can help ameliorate moral hazard problems inside
organizations.
Moral hazard in organizations is twofold. There is a moral hazard at the top: top managers are
tempted to renege their commitment to reward firm specific investments made by the employees
(Shleifer and Summers, 1991). There is also a moral hazard inside the organization: employees want to
save on effort because they do not fully internalize the benefits this effort brings to the organization.
This lack of internalization is partly due to the inability to measure the employees’ marginal productivity
and, thus, to reward them appropriately through contracts.
A culture of “keeping your word” can help alleviate both these problems. On the one hand, a top
management that keeps its word validates this behavior as a corporate norm, facilitating social
enforcement of the integrity norm among the employees and – in so doing – ameliorating the
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employees’ moral hazard problem. On the other hand, knowing that a breach of trust will lead to a
collapse of corporate norms, the top management will be reluctant to act in an opportunistic way vis-àvis
the older employees, who have sunk their human capital in firm specific investments.
Not only does this link explain why a culture of “keeping your word” can lead to higher
performance, but it also provides us with an opportunity to measure it. Since what matters is the
perception of senior management by the employees, the effectiveness of a social norm can be measured
by asking the employees’ view of whether top managers in the firm “keep their word”.
1.3 Corporate culture in public companies
While social norms can be value-enhancing, they are not without cost. The necessity to “keep your
word” restricts the flexibility of management, especially in a changing environment. This cost increases
with the number of different constituencies present in a firm. In an entrepreneurial firm, the two relevant
constituencies are customers and employees. When a firm goes public, there are also public
shareholders, bondholders and, possibly, the public at large, if the firm is so big to become relevant in a
community or state. Most importantly, in a public company the CEO statements towards the
shareholders can be observed by the employees as well, creating an important interaction between the
public communication to the market and the private communication to the employees that may
jeopardize the credibility of top managers (Farrell and Gibbons, 1989). For example, if a violation of
internal norms is discovered in a public corporation, in deciding the punishment, the CEO has to send
two signals: an internal one to the managers and employees that also serves as deterrent for future
violations and an external one to the market that maintains transparency of internal procedures. The
latter poses the risk of being (wrongly) interpreted by the market as the tip of an iceberg rather than an
isolated episode, inducing the top manager to dilute the punishment and the internal message. These
complications may weaken integrity norms in publicly traded companies vis-à-vis private firms.
Public ownership (and different corporate governance arrangements) changes also the trade-off
between the costs and benefits of strict integrity norms. Public listing makes the stock market value of
companies’ shares a very salient data point. To the extent this price subsumes all relevant information
the management would want to maximize shareholder value by maintaining internal norms consistent
with increased value. If – however—some assets are not considered (or underappreciated in the short
term), public ownership creates a distortion in decision making.
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Edmans (2011) shows that firms included in the 100 “best firms to work for” (as measured by
the GPTW ranking) have a higher abnormal stock market return in the years after the inclusion. As
Edmans argues, this is evidence that the stock market underappreciates certain intangibles, in particular
the intangibles that enter into the GPTW index. Since integrity and trust play a big role in the
determination of GPTW index, we can interpret this result as saying that the market underestimates the
value of integrity capital. Consequently, a CEO who allocates company resources to maximize the
current stock market value of a company will tend to underinvest in integrity, which in the short term
has clear cost, but only limited benefit.
Finally, public ownership comes with a separation between ownership and control and the CEOs
of a public corporation are not always driven solely by shareholder value maximization, since they do
not fully internalize the cost of deviating from value maximization. As a consequence, public companies
would, on average, maintain a weaker culture of integrity. Indeed, corporate governance in public
corporations is the mechanism through which investors in the company assure themselves that the
manager of the corporation makes decisions that maximize the return on their investment (Shleifer and
Vishny, 1997). This view would imply that if a culture of integrity indeed translates into positive
outcomes for the shareholders, managers of public firms with better corporate governance should
maintain such corporate value. We will test empirically whether traditional measures of corporate
governance quality have independent explanatory power once their public status is accounted for.
2. Advertised Values
One of the functions of stating specific corporate values is to attract employees with a similar value
system. Goldman – for instance - has advertised to the world (including its investors in the IPO) the
importance of integrity as a value. According to Greg Smith, this value was also used aggressively in
recruiting pitches. Thus, we want to start by analyzing what values corporations choose to advertise
2.1 Description of the data collection process
To analyze the advertised values, we look at the company’s website for the entire S&P 500 as of June
2011. A corporate website typically has one or more sections dedicated to the company’s values, culture
and working environment. We collect all the values listed in all these sections, maintaining the wording
used by the company.
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Companies often identify a set of core values, each of which is further articulated and explained
through other key words to clarify its meaning. We maintain this clustering of values as units of
meaning, grouping all the key words used by the company to describe a single value (i.e. if a company
describes the value “Integrity” with other words like “Honesty,” “Ethics,” “Accountability,” etc., we
would group all these words). The data was collected between June and October 2011, therefore the
dataset reflects the websites’ content of that period (the exact date of access is available).
Once the data collection for all S&P 500 companies was completed, we started an aggregation
process to identify the main values and classify them into a few categories. To do so, we first identified
the most recurring values across all companies. Starting from the top recurring value (Integrity, listed as
corporate value by almost 52% of the companies), we checked all the other words that were clustered
with it by each company and their frequency across companies. We took the one word that was most
commonly associated with the main value (Ethics, associated with Integrity in about 34% of companies)
and aggregated the two values together in a single category (unit of meaning).
Then we moved on to the second most recurring value (Teamwork) and performed the same
analysis to identify the word that was most commonly associated with it (Collaboration) and again
associated the two together, creating another category. We followed this process for all top 50 values,
progressively aggregating them based on the word association made by companies. As we proceeded
down the ranking, some values were most commonly associated with words that we had already
encountered higher in the ranking (for example, Accountability is the 6th most recurring value, and its
most commonly associated value is Integrity, which we had already linked with Ethics). In these cases
we added the new value to the pre-existing aggregation (i.e. the category now includes three values:
Integrity, Ethics and Accountability), therefore expanding the set of words identifying a similar concept.
This process allowed us to reduce a broad list of values to just a few categories that included multiple
words with similar meaning, as revealed by the data.
After performing this aggregation strategy for the 50 most recurring values, 9 categories or units of
meaning emerged from the data:
• Integrity + Ethics + Accountability + Trust + Honesty + Responsibility + Fairness + Do the right
thing + Transparency + Ownership
• Teamwork + Collaboration/Cooperation
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• Innovation + Creativity + Excellence + Improvement + Passion + Pride + Leadership + Growth
+ Performance + Efficiency + Results
• Respect + Diversity + Inclusion + Development + Talent + Employees + Dignity +
Empowerment
• Quality + Customer + Meet needs + Commitment + Make a difference + Dedication + Value +
Exceed expectations
• Safety + Health + Work/Life balance + Flexibility
• Community + Environment + Caring + Citizenship
• Communication + Openness
• Hard work + Reward + Fun + Energy
Finally, we created dummy variables for each of these 9 categories. Companies were assigned
dummy = 1 in a category if they listed any of the values part of that aggregation on their website. While
the list does not cover the totality of values listed by all the companies, it provides a good representation
of the main categories of values encountered in the data. In fact, among the companies which listed
corporate values on their website (some had no values listed), all except one had at least one value
falling into one of our categories, and most of them had 5 or more dummies.
Figure 1 reports the distribution of the number of values so defined reported by each company.
2.2 What is advertised?
On average, firms in the S&P 500 sample advertise 4 out of the 9 values in our list (see Table 2). The
modal firm advertises 5, but there is considerable dispersion (standard deviation of 2.5). Some firms
(15% of the sample) do not advertise any value (Figure 1) and of the 7 firms that choose to advertise just
one value, 4 choose to stress “innovation”. Innovation is also the most advertised value in the whole
sample—appearing in 80% of the S&P 500 firms, this is followed by integrity and respect (70%).
Interestingly, quality is stressed by 60% of the S&P 500 firms while half of them cite teamwork as a
value. Few firms (12 in total) advertise all the values, and almost all 89 modal firms advertise innovation
and 88% also advertise integrity.
2.3 Do advertised values matter?
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We cannot check directly whether advertised values lead to a better-matched workforce. Thus, one way
to see whether they matter is to check whether they have any predictive value on measures of firm
performance.
Table 3 shows regressions of advertised values on various measures of performance: Tobin’s q,
return on sales, consumer satisfaction (the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) see Fornell et
al. (1996), and one indicator of frequency of class actions suits against the company. These measures
capture firms “success” along various dimensions that may potentially be affected by the company’s
predominant values. To save on space, we use only integrity and the principal component as measures of
advertised values, but the results are similar if we use other values.
With one exception, we find very little evidence that advertised values are correlated with
performance; there is no detectable correlation with firm profitability and Tobin’s q, and no correlation
with the frequency of class action suits. The exception, an interesting one, is the customer satisfaction
index which is significantly higher among firms who advertise integrity and firms with a higher
principal component of advertised values. One possibility is that advertised values are meant to talk to
the firm’s customers and are thus reflected on their satisfaction; but bear little correlation with the
financial performance and the stock market valuation because these variables are affected by many other
variables and only indirectly by customer satisfaction. Another possibility is that many of these
advertised values are simply cheap talk. Since the cost of claiming on the Web values such as integrity
or care of the environment is close to zero, most firms will do it, regardless of the actual set of values
present in the organization. To explore actual values we need an alternative set of data.
3. The Great Place to Work® dataset
Since the most claimed values after innovation (which has an easy to interpret economic meaning) is
integrity, we will focus on integrity. Measuring integrity is not easy. While integrity could sometimes be
in the eye of the beholder, the relevant eyes in an organization are those of the employees. Thus, ideally
we would like to measure how workers perceive that top managers uphold integrity as a value. A dataset
assembled by the Great Place to Work®
Institute (GPTWI) fulfills this goal.
The GPTWI partners with more than 5,500 relatively large companies operating in 45 countries to
conduct a comprehensive annual assessment of the workplace of these enterprises. To assess a
company’s culture, the GPTWI collects two datasets: the Culture Audit Survey©
(CAS) and the Trust
12
Index©
employee survey (TIES). CAS, typically filled out by a company representative, collects
information about pay and benefits programs, corporate practices, and any other accompanying material
submitted by a company. TIES measures employees’ assessment of the level of trust they experience
with management (credibility, respect, fairness). Through 58 statements, this survey covers a range of
different topics exploring attitudes toward management, job satisfaction, fairness in the workplace, and
camaraderie. For each firm analyzed, the invitation to participate in the survey is sent each year to a
random sample of at least 400 employees of the company across all tenure and job levels. Each
employee anonymously responds directly to the GPTWI, with a response rate of about 60%.
For the United States, the Institute elaborates a list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For®
”. Each
January since 1998 this list has been featured in Fortune magazine, but there is no involvement of the
magazine in the evaluation process. Any company with more than 1,000 employees operating in the US
for more than 7 years can submit an application to the Institute to be considered in the list. In the United
States every year roughly 400 companies complete the full application process to be considered.
Under a confidentiality agreement signed with the GPTWI, we have access to both surveys for the
companies applying in the period 2007-2011, including those firms that did not make the list of 100 Best
Companies to Work For. Over this 5-year span, 1,072 private and publicly listed firms filled out the
Culture Audit©
questionnaire, for a total of 2,132 firm-year observations. We limit our analysis to forprofit
companies, excluding from the sample non-profit companies and government agencies
(respectively 236 and 3, for a total of 510 company-year observations). We also drop 227 firm-year
observations for which the information on the end of fiscal year is missing.2
Our final sample consists of 679 companies, for a total of 1,367 firm-year observations, with about
half of them applying to the GPTWI more than once. We match each company-year observation from
the Culture Audit©
database with the corresponding Trust Index©
employee survey. This dataset collects
a repeated cross-section of 447,529 workers, where we restrict our attention to the subsample of 410,521
full-time employees. For the median firm in our sample 244 employees are surveyed each wave between
2007 and 2011, corresponding to about 5% of its total annual workforce.
2
Merging the dataset with Compustat/CRPS monthly dataset, we conventionally attribute fiscal year equal t to those
observations whose reported end of fiscal year falls between June of year t and May of year t+1.
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Finally, we construct a cross-sectional dataset keeping only the first year a company appears in our
dataset to avoid understating the standard errors.3
Out of the final sample, 294 of the 679 firms are
privately held, while 385 are public companies traded on the NYSE or the NASDAQ; 191 of which are
part of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
For the purpose of this study we focus our attention on a limited set of company-level variables
collected from the Culture Audit©
survey and on a set of corporate culture metrics from the Trust Index©
employee survey which we aggregate to firm level. Table 1 provides a detailed description of all our
variables.
From the Culture Audit©
we use the information on the total number of workers in all plants based in
the United States, including full-time, part-time and temporary employees. The variable Unionized
workers/Employees indicates the fraction of employees joining a worker union, while Union
Grievances/Unionized workers represents the number of union grievances per unionized worker. Job
Applicants/Employees is the total number job applications collected during the year as a fraction of
current employees. For each company we use information on the headquarters location, layoffs
involving more than 5% of their employees in the last year, the coverage of the health insurance plan
and the number of on-site perks and benefits offered by the firm to its employees.
Our proxies for a culture of integrity are the responses to two distinct statements from the Trust
Index©
employee survey. Employees are asked to express a measure of the strength of their experience
on a scale from 1 (almost always untrue) to 5 (almost always true). The two statements we use are
“Management’s actions match its words” and “Management is honest and ethical in its business
practices”. We use these responses to identify two key dimensions of integrity: the “wholeness”
characteristic emphasized by Erhard et al (2007) and the ethical dimension.
For each surveyed employee, we have information on demographic characteristics such as age,
gender, ethnicity, tenure and job type (manager versus non-manager) collected through the Trust Index
survey. Finally, in our main specification, all individual statements from the Trust Index© employee
survey are averaged at a company-year level and matched with the respective company-year information
from the Culture Audit©
survey.4
Table 2 presents the sample statistics for all the variables of interest.
3
To control for the difference in calendar year in which firms enter in the sample, we control for year fixed effects in all the
regressions.
4
We conduct a robustness check by estimating the same model by using individual data as well.
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3.2 Other data used
For the publicly listed companies in the Great Place to Work dataset (385 firms), we collect financial
and economic performance data using the CRPS/Compustat merged database. For each company we
calculate return on sales (ROS) and Tobin’s Q. Comparing our sample to the S&P 500 sample, these
companies have equal return on sales (10 percent), and slightly higher Tobin’s Q (2.14 for the GPTWI
sample and 2.05 for the S&P500 sample)5
.
One potential goal to advertise and uphold certain values is to attract better employees. To this end,
we look at the way students perceive potential employers through the Universum survey. Every year,
Universum surveys a large sample of students and asks questions about their career expectations and
how they perceive companies as potential employers. Students are asked to pick the employers they
would consider working for and then choose those they would most like to work for, that is the
companies that they perceive as being “Ideal”. The “Universum Top 100 Ideal Employer Ranking”
reflects the frequency with which these employers were selected as being ideal by the students who
participated in the surveys. In other words, this survey reflects how many students perceive a given
company as a “best place to work”. The variable Top100 Universum Student Survey indicates whether a
firm in the GPTWI sample made the “Universum Top 100 Ideal Employer Ranking” in 20116
.
To determine whether a company ever received some venture capital financing we use Thompson
Venture Economics database. Our venture-backed dummy variable equals to 1 if the company received
at least one round of financing from a venture capitalist since 1975.
Finally, for the public companies in our sample, we collect corporate governance and ownership
variables from the standard sources. The variable “Percentage Inside Directors” comes from the
Corporate Library database and indicates the share of inside directors sitting in the board. As a proxy for
the level of shareholder rights we use the G-Index by Gompers-Ishi-Metrick (Gompers, Ishi and
5
Calculating the average ROS and Tobin’s Q for the Great Place to Work® sample, we attribute to each fiscal year a weight
equal to the frequency of public companies in the GPTW cross-section sample for that fiscal year.
6
The list of Top 100 Universum Student Survey companies of 2011 is available online at
http://www.universumglobal.com/IDEAL-Employer-Rankings/The-National-Editions/American-Student-Survey.
15
Metrick, 2003) from RiskMetrics Governance7
. For institutional ownership we use Compact Disclosure
where ownership data includes the number of institutional owners, the number of shares issued and the
percent of outstanding shares held by each institution (Perc Inst. Investors). Information on CEO total
compensation (Log CEO Total Compensation) and the ratio variable to total CEO compensation (CEO
Variable/Total Compensation) comes from ExecuCompustat database.
The exact definition of all the variables used and the source is reported in Table 1. Table 2 provides
the summary statistics of these variables.
4. Econometric Concerns
As Table 2C shows, the individual responses to the various distinctive statements asked in the
employees’ survey are highly correlated. For example, the agreement with the integrity statement has a
0.91 correlation with the agreement with the ethics statement. This pattern raise the serious possibility
that, in addition to a standard omitted variable problem, there might be a so-called “halo effect”
pervading all the answers. Thorndike (1920) defines it as "a problem that arises in data collection when
there is carry-over from one judgment to another."
We can model this effect as an error-in-variable problem that affects potentially all the answers
to the questionnaire. Let x denote the agreement with the integrity statement and z the agreement with
another statement in the survey. We let *i i ix x h= + where *ix is the true response (i.e., the response
unaffected by the other questions in the survey) and ih is the halo effect; similarly, *i i iz z h= + , with
cov( * , ) cov( * , ) 0i i i ix h z h= = so that the true values are uncorrelated with the halo effect as in standard
errors in variables problems.
The halo effect creates two problems: first, it brings in a standard error-in-variables problem
which tends to induce attenuation bias when we use integrity as an explanatory variable. The second,
and potentially more serious problem, is that if the halo effect is correlated with our variable of interest
when explaining integrity (e.g. our measures of corporate governance such as being a public company)
we could find a spurious correlation between integrity and this variable even when none is present. This
is equivalent to a problem of unobserved heterogeneity.
7
The variable G-Index has been discontinued since 2007. We assign to each company in our dataset the latest available data
available in RiskMetricks.
16
The type of bias and the way to address it depends upon whether we use our survey measure as
explanatory variable or dependent variable.
4.1 Case I: integrity on the RHS
Let iy be a variable such as profitability or Tobin’s q. To test whether there is a correlation between
profitability and integrity we would like to estimate the following regression model
(5) *i i i iy x hγ ε= + +
where iε is an iid error term with cov( * , ) 0i ix ε = and we allow for the possibility that the halo effect
spreads over our outcome variable iy .
If we estimate
i i iy x uγ= +
where (1 )i i iu hε γ= + − , by OLS we obtain
*
var( )var( )
ˆ
var( ) var( )
ihx
x x
γ γ= + ,
which is inconsistent if a halo effect is present. The bias is the sum of two components: a standard
attenuation effect,
*
var( )
var( )
x
x
γ , and an unobserved heterogeneity effect,
var( )
var( )
ih
x
originating from the
potential correlation between the halo effect and the outcome variable which would give rise to a
correlation between integrity and the outcome variable even when none is present (γ =0) .
If we find a variable iz , affected by the same halo effect, but uncorrelated with the true integrity
measure (i.e., such that cov( * , * ) 0i ix z = ), then in (5) we can substitute *i i ih z z= − and estimate
*
i i i i i i i iy x z z x z vγ δ ε δ γ δ= + + + = + +
where the new error term iv is orthogonal to the integrity variable ix . This correction resolves the
unobserved heterogeneity problem but introduces an error-in-variables problem in the iz regressor. Yet,
we are interested in the coefficientγ and notδ . The asymptotic estimate of our parameter of interest will
then be
17
* * *
* * * *
var( )cov( , )
ˆ
2var( )var( ) cov( , )
z z x
x z z x
γ γ δ γ=+ =
−
which confirms that we can identify γ if we can find a variable iz such that cov( * , * ) 0i ix z = .
4.2 Case II: integrity on the LHS
The other case is when we have integrity as a LHS variable and test whether it is correlated with some
RHS variable such as governance. Thus, we want to estimate the true relation
*
i i ix gθ ε= +
but we estimate
(6) i i i ix g hθ ε= + +
which clearly poses an identification problem if governance is correlated with the halo variable.
Replacing *
i i ih z z= − and estimating
*
i i i i ix g z zθ λ ε= + + + ,
the (asymptotic ) value of the estimated parameter would be
.
Hence, for θ to be identified we need to assume that governance is uncorrelated with *
iz ; alternatively
we could use an instrument if we can find a variable that causes governance to change and that is
uncorrelated with the error term in (6).
4.3 The right control
The above discussion suggests that the ideal control to absorb the halo effect is a variable that is affected
by the halo effect as our variable of interest, but is uncorrelated with the true measure of integrity and
the governance variables we use. Note that this control addresses the halo effect, but it does not deal
with a potential omitted variable problem.
In the GPTWI survey there are 58 statements divided into five groups: credibility, respect,
fairness, pride, and camaraderie. Both by the label of the group and by the nature of the questions we
18
exclude a priori credibility, fairness and pride, because too close to the concept we want to measure: i.e.
integrity. Looking at the remaining two groups we focus on two statements (one per group), which
appear as remote as possible from the concept of integrity. In the respect group we use the statement:
“This is a physically safe place to work”. From the camaraderie section, we use the statement “I can be
myself around here”.
As Table 2C shows, the degree of agreement with both these statements (especially “safe place”)
is relatively lower. This is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition to be a valid control in the cases
we use integrity on the RHS. Since the * *
cov( , ) cov( , ) var( )j jk j jk jx z x z h= + , if we select the z with the
lowest covariance with observed integrity we are selecting the one with the lowest * *
cov( , )j jkx z . For this
reason we are going to privilege the “safe place” question, but we will use both for robustness.
The story is different when we use integrity as a LHS variable. Here, the (true value of the)
control should be uncorrelated with the measure of governance we use. In this respect, a camaraderie
statement such as “I can be myself around here” is more likely to be uncorrelated with the governance
variable than a “safe place to work” statement. Yet, for consistency we are going to report results with
both these controls.
5. Integrity and performance measures
We start with financial measures of performance, which we have available only for the subsample of
publicly traded firms. Table 4A reports the estimate of a linear regression where the dependent variable
is Tobin’s q (in the first four columns) and the return on sales (in the last four). Besides industry and
year fixed effects, as control variables we report a measure of size (log of the number of employees) and
one of the two proxies for the halo effect: the employees’ opinion on the safety of the work place or their
opinion on “I can be myself around here”. Also, all regressions contain (not reported) controls for
company age, the geographical location of the company (macro area in which the company headquarter
is located), and a constant term; results with the full set of controls are reported in the online Appendix.
As columns 1 and 2 show, there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between the
level of managerial integrity perceived by the employees and Tobin’s q. One standard deviation increase
in integrity raises the level of Tobin’s q by 0.19 standard deviations if we use the “safe place” control
(column I) or 0.47 standard deviations if we use the “I can be myself” control (column 2).
19
Columns 3 to 4 present similar evidence, where we substituted the ethics question to the integrity
one. The results are similar even from an economic point of view, with a stronger impact when we
control for “I can be myself”, rather than “safe place”8
.
Columns 5 to 8 replace Tobin’s q with the return on sales as a measure of firm financial
performance. Also according to this measure there is a positive correlation between firm performance
and our measures of values, though the coefficient is statistically significant only when controlling for “I
can be myself”. For robustness purpose we check the robustness of these results by including other
standard controls for Tobin’s q, such as Return on Assets, R&D over Sales, S&P index inclusion. Our
main results remain the same.
In the first four columns of Table 4B, we use as outcome variable the fraction of labor force that
is unionized. In a world where promises are not kept very often, workers feel more the need to be
protected, and unionization is a possible response to this need. Consistent with this interpretation we
find that integrity is negatively correlated with unionization. One standard deviation increase in integrity
decreases the level of unionization by 0.07 standard deviations if we use the “safe place” control
(column 1) or 0.24 standard deviations if we use the “I can be myself” control (column 2), albeit only
the latter coefficient is statistically different from zero.
In columns 5 to 8 of Table 4B we substitute as a left hand side variable the number of union
grievances per unionized employee. In general we do not find any significant correlation between
integrity and the relative number of grievances. The only exception is when we use managerial ethics as
a measure of integrity and we control for “I can be myself”.
Finally, in Table 4C, columns 1 to 4, we use the desirability of the company as a place to work
measured by the Universum Students Survey. This variable is a dummy equal to 1 if a company makes
the list of Top 100 Ideal Employer and zero otherwise. When we use this desirability measure, we
observe a positive correlation between integrity and desirability, but only when we use “I can be myself”
as a control variable is this correlation statistically significant.
In columns 5 to 8 of Table 4C we use as a LHS variable the ratio between job applications and
number of positions filled. We intend this to be a measure of the pent up demand for jobs in this firm.
8
The coefficient of managerial integrity (managerial ethics) becomes 1.235 (1.493) and statistically significant at the 1%
level when we include both controls (“I can be myself” and “safe place”) and the coefficients of the controls become
insignificant due to collinearity.
20
Here the results depend heavily on the control we use. When we use “safe place” the coefficients of both
integrity and ethics are (contrary to expectation) negative (albeit only the former is statistically different
from zero at the 10% level). When we use “I can be myself” as control, the coefficients of both integrity
and ethics are positive and statistically significant.
6. Integrity and going public
6.1 OLS regressions
In Table 5 we explore the correlation between being a publicly traded company and the average
level of integrity. In columns 1-3 we use the integrity measure as a dependent variable. Since founders
tend to identify themselves with the company, we control for whether the founder is still on the board,
expecting it to make integrity more sustainable. In addition, we insert several other control variables: a
measure of size (log of the number of employees), the quality of employees’ benefits (both in terms of
insurance coverage and in terms of onsite benefits), demographics characteristics of the firm (average
tenure, average age, fraction of women, black and Hispanics), industry, geographical areas, and year
fixed effects. In addition, we alternatively control for one of the two proxies for the halo effect: the
employees’ opinion of on the safety of the work place or their opinion on “I can be myself around here”.
The main variable of interest is whether a company is publicly traded. We find that integrity is
lower in publicly traded companies: public firms have an integrity value that is 0.21 standard deviations
below similar firms that are private. Contrary to expectation, neither the presence of the founder, nor the
nature of customers is correlated with the level of integrity. Among the control variables it is interesting
to point out the coefficient of the South dummy: firms located in the Southern part of the United States
exhibit significantly higher level of integrity than firms located in the rest of the United States.
When we look at venture backed firms (column 2) we do not find any correlation of this
financing decision with integrity. Yet, this lack of a correlation might be due to a variation in the impact
of this decision. In column III we analyze the correlation between integrity and venture backing
conditional on a firm being private or public. This correlation is significantly positive only among
publicly held firms.
6.2 An Event Study
21
Going public is a decision and as such is endogenous. So it is hard to tell whether firms that chose to go
public are different in some other dimension, which is correlated with a lower level of integrity. One
way to address this problem would be to find some instruments for the going public decision. We tried
with some instruments based on the evidence in Pagano et al. (1998), but they were weak. An alternative
is to conduct an event study of firms that went public to see whether they indeed experience a drop in
integrity around the time of the IPO. Unfortunately, in the GPTW sample there are only two firms for
which we have data both before and after the IPO. The results for these two firms are reported in Figure
2. The names of the firms have been removed to respect the confidentiality agreement with GPTW.
In one case we observe a pronounced drop in the average level of integrity at the time of the IPO.
In the other case, the level of integrity rises a bit around the IPO. Thus, this analysis in inconclusive, but
it does indicate that integrity can change rapidly over time.
6.4 Integrity and traditional governance variables
In Table 6 we explore whether more traditional corporate governance variables are correlated with the
level of integrity. Since these variables are available only for publicly traded companies, we restrict the
sample to those. We only report the estimates obtained controlling for the “I can be myself” variable, but
the results are the same if we use the safe place” variable.
The percentage of inside directors on the board has a positive but insignificant effect on integrity
and so has the G-index of corporate governance. By contrast, the percentage of stock owned by
institutional investors and the percentage of stock owned by large shareholders (more than 5%) has a
negative coefficient, with the second one being statistically different from zero. A possible explanation
is that a more concentrated ownership structure leads to more attention towards shareholders value
maximization, with negative consequences on the value of maintaining a reputation for integrity.
When we look at CEO compensation (both the level and the slope) we find a positive and
statistically significant correlation with integrity. A higher compensation can be both the sign of a very
valuable CEO and/or of a very entrenched one. Either way, it is a sign that the CEO has more power visà-vis
the shareholders and thus she is better able – if she wants to - to maintain the integrity value even
at the expense of a lower short term profit.
22
In columns 7-12 we repeat the same exercise with managerial ethics as a left hand side variable.
None of the corporate governance variables is significant. In sum, the ethical level seems uncorrelated
with the traditional corporate control variables, while the level of integrity is correlated in a way at odd
with the traditional effects of these variables. Both these results suggest that integrity is a phenomenon
that cannot be traced to traditional corporate governance but should to be analyzed from an alternative
governance perspective.
7. Conclusions
In resigning from Goldman, Greg Smith claimed that a culture of integrity was “the secret sauce”
that made Goldman great. He also claimed that this culture had deteriorated since the IPO. While we are
unable to test his claims directly, we study whether on average a culture of integrity adds value and
whether on average this culture is weaker among publicly traded companies. We find both these
statements to be true. Integrity is positively correlated with financial performance and attractiveness of
job offerings, while it is negatively correlated with the degree of unionization. In the GPTW sample we
also find that publicly traded companies are less able to sustain a high level of integrity.
With few notable exceptions, the finance literature has ignored the role corporate culture can
play. This is especially surprising more than 25 years after the “incomplete contract” revolution
(Grossman and Hart, 1986). If contracts are incomplete, values can definitely play a role in ameliorating
the inefficiencies created by the incompleteness in the contractual environment and the finance literature
has to realize it. More importantly, this paper shows that a company’s financial choices have
consequences on the corporate culture too, an aspect which is generally ignored in the finance literature.
We are fully aware that this is just a first cut at this very difficult, but important problem. The
only way to convincingly prove a causal effect of integrity on performance is through a field
experiment. Yet, given the costs and complexity of setting up these experiments, the first necessary step
is to understand the potential sources of this link and show that they appear to be present in the data. We
regard our study as this first step.
23
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25
Figure 1: Frequency of advertised values
This figure shows the frequency of advertised values by S&P500 companies. The exact definition of the value advertised is
described in Table 1.
Figure 2: Managerial Integrity around the IPO date
This figure shows the level of managerial integrity before and after the IPO for the two companies, blue and red bars, for
which we have data both before and after. t is the IPO year.
Table 1: Description of the variables
3.50
3.60
3.70
3.80
3.90
4.00
4.10
4.20
4.30
4.40
4.50
t-2 t-1 t t+1
26
The table provides a detailed description of all the variables used in our analysis. We begin presenting the variables from the Great Place to
Work Culture Audit©
company survey, followed by those from the Great Place to Work Trust Index©
employee survey.
Variable Description Source Database
Integrity advertised?
.
This variable equals one if at least one of the following words is advertised in the
company’s website: Integrity, Ethics, Accountability, Trust, Honesty, Responsibility,
Fairness, Do the right thing, Transparency, Ownership.
Company’s webpage
Teamwork advertised? This variable equals one if at least one of the following words is advertised in the
company’s website: Teamwork, Collaboration/Cooperation.
Company’s webpage
Innovation
advertised?
This variable equals one if at least one of the following words is advertised in the
company’s website: Innovation, Creativity, Excellence, Improvement, Passion, Pride,
Leadership, Growth, Performance, Efficiency, Results.
Company’s webpage
Respect advertised? This variable equals one if at least one of the following words is advertised in the
company’s website: Respect, Diversity, Inclusion, Development, Talent, Employees,
Dignity, and Empowerment.
Company’s webpage
Quality advertised? This variable equals one if at least one of the following words is advertised in the
company’s website: Quality, Customer, Meet needs, Commitment, Make a difference,
Dedication, Value, Exceed expectations.
Company’s webpage
Citizenship
advertised?
This variable equals one if one of the following words is advertised in the company’s
website: Community, Environment, Caring, Citizenship
Company’s webpage
Communication
advertised?
This variable equals one if one of the following words is advertised in the company’s
website: Communication, Openness
Company’s webpage
Hard work
advertised?
This variable equals one if one of the following words is advertised in the company’s
website: Hard work, Reward, Fun, Energy
Company’s webpage
Principal Component
Web
This variable is the principal component extracted, for each company, from the dummies
Integrity Advertised?, Teamwork Advertised?, Innovation Advertised?, Quality
Advertised?, Safety Advertised?, Citizenship Advertised?, Communication Advertised?,
Hard Work Advertised?.
Company’s webpage
Tot Value advertised This variable counts the number of values advertised by the company in its webpage,
ranging from 0 to 9.
Company’s webpage
GPTW score GPTW score is the average score of question “Is this company a Great Place to Work?”
(described in Table I) across all surveyed employees of a company, on a 1-5 scale.
Great Place to Work ,
Trust Index database
Integrity score For each surveyed employee we calculate the average of questions q_08, q_09, q_11 q_14,
q_18, q_28 - q_39, q_42, and q_45 described in Table I. Integrity score is the
average score across all surveyed employees of a company, on a 1-5 scale.
Great Place to Work ,
Trust Index database
Teamwork score For each surveyed employee we calculate the average of questions q_19 q_43 and q_57
described in Table I. Teamwork score is the average score across all surveyed employees
of a company, on a 1-5 scale.
Great Place to Work ,
Trust Index database
Innovation score For each surveyed employee we calculate the average of questions q_05 - q_07, q_10,
and q_20 described in Table I. Innovation score is the average score across all surveyed
employees of a company, on a 1-5 scale.
Great Place to Work ,
Trust Index database
Respect score For each surveyed employee we calculate the average of questions q_15 and q_16
described in Table I. Respect score is the average score across all surveyed employees of
a company, on a 1-5 scale.
Great Place to Work ,
Trust Index database
Quality score For each surveyed employee we calculate the average of questions q_40, q_41 and q_46
described in Table I. Quality score is the average score across all surveyed employees of
a company, on a 1-5 scale.
Great Place to Work ,
Trust Index database
Safety score For each surveyed employee we calculate the average of questions q_21, q_22, q_24 and
q_25 described in Table I. Safety score is the average score across all surveyed
Great Place to Work ,
Trust Index database
27
employees of a company, on a 1-5 scale.
Citizenship score For each surveyed employee we calculate the average of questions q_23, q_26, q_27,
q_47, q_48, q_49, q_50, and q_53-q_56 described in Table I. Citizenship score is the
average score across all surveyed employees of a company, on a 1-5 scale.
Great Place to Work ,
Trust Index database
Unionized
Workers/Employees
Number of unionized workers over total employees; Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Job Applicants/Jobs
Filled
Number of job applicants over number of jobs filled; Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Union
Grievances/Unionized
Workers
Number of union grievances per unionized employee; Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Public Dummy equal 1 if the company is publicly listed during the fiscal year of interest; Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Log Employees Logarithmic transformation of total number of the employees of the company (includes
full-time, part-time and temporary employees);
Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Layoff Dummy equal 1 if the company responds positively to the following question:
“Has the company had a single (or combination of) layoff(s) that reduced the number of
employees by 5% or more in the past five years? (Yes/No)”
Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Insurance Coverage This variable counts the number of positive answers to the following question: “Does the
company have health insurance plans that cover the following (Yes/No): Dental care;
Vision Care; Prescription drug subsidy; Mental Health Care; Alternative treatments
(acupuncture, homeopathy, or chiropractic); Fertility treatments; Other;”
Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Onsite Benefits This variable counts the number of the following perks and benefits offered on-site by
the company: Free snacks during the day; Free beverages during the day; Dry cleaning;
Banking; Film processing; Travel service; Free lunch on a regular, daily basis;
Subsidized lunch on a regular, daily basis; Free breakfast foods on a regular, daily
basis; Take-home meals on a regular, daily basis; Personal concierge service; On-site
package/mailing service; Massage therapy;
Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Midwest Dummy equal 1 if the company’s headquarter is located in the Midwest of the United
States;
Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
South Dummy equal 1 if the company’s headquarter is located in the South of the United
States;
Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
North-East Dummy equal 1 if the company’s headquarter is located in the North-East of the United
States;
Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
West Dummy equal 1 if the company’s headquarter is located in the West of the United States; Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Non Continental Dummy equal 1 if the company’s headquarter is located in non-continental United States
(Alaska, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, etc.);
Great Place to Work,
Culture Audit©
company survey;
Managerial Integrity This variable represents the employee response to the following statement
“Management’s actions match its words”. Employees are asked to express a measure of
Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
28
the strength of their experience on a scale from 1 (almost always untrue) to 5 (almost
always true). We average the employees’ responses to a company-year level;
employee survey;
Managerial Ethics This variable represents the employee response to the following statement “Management
is honest and ethical in its business practices”. Employees are asked to express a
measure of the strength of their experience on a scale from 1 (almost always untrue) to 5
(almost always true). We average the employees’ responses to a company-year level;
Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Safe Place This variable represents the employee response to the following statement “This is a
physically safe place to work”. Employees are asked to express a measure of the strength
of their experience on a scale from 1 (almost always untrue) to 5 (almost always true).
We average the employees’ responses to a company-year level;
Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Being Myself This variable represents the employee response to the following statement “I can be
myself around here”. Employees are asked to express a measure of the strength of their
experience on a scale from 1 (almost always untrue) to 5 (almost always true). We
average the employees’ responses to a company-year level;
Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Tenure (Survey
Average)
Average tenure of the employees participating in the survey for each company-year; Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Manager (Survey
Average)
Fraction of managers among the employees participating in the survey for each
company-year;
Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Age (Survey Average) Average age of the employees participating in the survey for each company-year; Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Female (Survey
Average)
Fraction of females among the employees participating in the survey for each company-
year;
Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Black (Survey
Average)
Fraction of African American among the employees participating in the survey for each
company-year;
Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Hispanic (Survey
Average)
Fraction of Hispanic among the employees participating in the survey for each company-
year;
Great Place to Work,
Trust Index©
employee survey;
Founder Around Founder Around is a dummy equal 1 whenever the founder is either an active director or
he participates to board meetings in a given year.
Hoovers website;
Corporate Library;
Company website;
WSJ; Wikipedia;
ROS Return on Sales (ROS), calculated as Net Income/Sales, where Net Income is item
NI and Sales is item SALE, from Compustat Funda.
Compustat,
Fundamental Annual;
Tobin’s q Tobin’s is calculated as:
[(Total Assets - Shareholder’s Equity + Market Value of Equity) / Total Assets]
where Total Assets is item AT from Compustat funda, Shareholder’s Equity is
item TEQ from Compustat Funda, and Market Value of Equity is the sum of the total
market value each security issued by the company (MM USD). The market value is
calculated as price of the share (item PRC , CRSP msf) at the end of the fiscal year times
the number of outstanding shares (item SHROUT, CRSP msf) at the end of the fiscal
year.
Compustat
Fundamental
Annual/CRSP;
Top100 Universum
Student Survey
This variable is a dummy equal 1 if the company makes the list of Top 100 Ideal
Employer according to the Universum Students Suvery 2011.
The list of Top 100 Universum Student Survey companies of 2011 is available online at
http://www.universumglobal.com/IDEAL-Employer-Rankings/The-National-
Editions/American-Student-Survey.
Universum Student
Survey, 2011;
29
Venture Backed Dummy variable equal 1 if the company received since 1975 at least on round of
financing from a venture capitalist.
Thompson Venture
Economics database;
Perc. Inside Directors Share of inside directors sitting in the board, calculated as Inside Directors / Total
Directors, where Inside Directors and Total Directos are respectively variable
DirectorsInside and DirectorsTotal from Corporate Library Companies database.
Corporate Library,
Companies database;
Perc. Owners more 5
perc.
Variable OwnersFivePercentPctg from Corporate Library Companies database,
indicating the estimated percentage of outstanding shares held by any 5% or greater
shareholders
Corporate Library,
Companies database;
G-Index Corporate governance index by Gompes-Ishi-Metrick (Gompes, Ishi and Metrick, 2003),
variable gindex from RiskMetrics Governance database. The variable G-Index has been
discontinued since 2007. We assign to each company in our dataset the latest available
data available in RiskMetricks.
RiskMetrics,
Governance database;
Perc Inst. Investors Total percentage of shares owned by institutional investors. Compact Disclosure;
Log CEO Total
Compensation
Logarithmic transformation of CEO total annual compensation (Salary + Bonus +
Option Grant + Other Annual Compensation) in K USD. This variable is item tdc1 if
item pcfo="CEO" from ExecuCompustat Annual Compensation.
ExecuCompustat;
CEO Variable/Total
Compensation
Ratio of variable to total CEO annual compensation, where the variable annual
compensation is defined as the difference between items tdc1- (salary+othcomp) if item
pcfo="CEO" from ExecuCompustat Annual Compensation.
ExecuCompustat;
30
Table 2: Summary Statistics and Cross-Correlations
Panel A shows the summary statistics of the variables obtained from the information available in websites for the companies in the S&P500 sample Panel B
the summary statistics for the values in our GPTW sample. For each of the 679 companies, we select the first year they appear in the Great Place to Work
Culture Audit©
survey between 2007 and 2011. Panel C reports some cross-correlations among the variables in the GPTW sample. For a detailed description
of each variable, see Table 1.
Panel A: Web site declared values
Variable Mean Median Std. Dev. 10th Perc. 90th Perc. Observations
Integrity 0.7 1 0.5 0 1 500
Teamwork 0.5 1 0.5 0 1
500
Innovation 0.8 1 0.4 0 1
500
Respect 0.7 1 0.5 0 1
500
Quality 0.6 1 0.5 0 1
500
Safety 0.3 0 0.4 0 1
500
Citizenship 0.3 0 0.5 0 1
500
Communication 0.3 0 0.4 0 1
500
Hard work 0.3 0 0.5 0 1
500
N. of values 4 5 2.5 0 7
500
Principal component 1.6 1,8 0.9 0 2,5
500
31
Panel B: GPTW variables
Variable Mean Median Std. Dev. 10th Perc. 90th Perc. Observations
Managerial Integrity 3.90 3.90 0.25 3.57 4.20 679
Managerial Ethics 4.29 4.30 0.23 3.97 4.57 679
Tobin's q 2.14 1.57 1.53 1.02 4.18 368
ROS 0.10 0.08 0.11 0.02 0.21 383
Unionized Workers/Employees 0.05 0.00 0.13 0.00 0.20 664
Job Applicants/Employees 7.33 4.01 19.20 0.55 15.62 601
Union Grievances/Unionized Workers 0.01 0.00 0.05 0.00 0.03 664
Top100 Universum Student Survey 0.11 0.00 0.31 0.00 1.00 678
Public company 0.58 1.00 0.49 0 1 679
Venture Backed 0.10 0.00 0.29 0 0 679
Perc. Inside Directors 0.17 0.14 0.09 0.08 0.30 291
G-Index 9.39 9.00 2.44 6.33 12.67 271
Perc Inst. Investors 0.69 0.73 0.25 0.37 0.95 359
Perc. Owners more 5 perc. 0.19 0.15 0.17 0.00 0.40 290
Log CEO Total Compensation 8.57 8.66 1.14 7.31 9.91 256
CEO Variable/Total Compensation 0.78 0.82 0.16 0.56 0.93 256
Safe Place 4.62 4.66 0.21 4.32 4.85 679
Being Myself 4.28 4.28 0.17 4.07 4.49 679
Highest Industry Market/Book 5.24 4.55 2.98 2.50 1.11 669
Fraction Public in NAICS sector 0.20 0.12 0.20 0.03 0.45 669
Employees 15359.7 4856 32800.3 1249 35874 678
Layoff 0.20 0.00 0.40 0 1 639
Insurance Coverage 5 5 1 4 6 639
Onsite Benefits 4 4 3 1 7 639
Tenure (Survey Average) 7 7 3 4 11 639
Manager (Survey Average) 0.29 0.27 0.12 0.17 0.45 639
Age (Survey Average) 41 42 4 36 45 639
Female (Survey Average) 0.45 0.45 0.17 0.23 0.66 639
Black (Survey Average) 0.07 0.05 0.06 0.02 0.14 639
Hispanic (Survey Average) 0.11 0 0.19 0 0 639
Midwest 0.26 0 0.44 0 1 639
South 0.27 0 0.45 0 1 639
North-East 0.26 0 0.44 0 1 639
West 0.21 0 0.41 0 1 639
Non Continental 0.00 0 0.06 0 0 639
32
Panel C: Correlation matrix among GPTW variables
Managerial
Integrity
Managerial
Ethics
Cooperation Safe Place Being Myself Tobin’s Q ROS Public
Venture
Backed
Founder
Around
Perc. Inside
Directors
Log
Employees
Managerial Integrity 1.00 0.91 0.89 0.58 0.80 0.27 0.24 -0.24 0.10 0.19 0.21 -0.30
Managerial Ethics 0.91 1.00 0.87 0.68 0.77 0.27 0.26 -0.16 0.09 0.12 0.14 -0.26
Safe Place 0.58 0.68 0.68 1.00 0.49 0.23 0.32 0.05 0.16 0.06 0.04 -0.20
Being Myself 0.80 0.77 0.75 0.49 1.00 0.19 0.09 -0.18 0.18 0.24 0.25 -0.28
Tobin’s q 0.27 0.27 0.27 0.23 0.19 1.00 0.27 0.05 0.32 0.21 0.09 -0.11
ROS 0.24 0.26 0.22 0.32 0.09 0.27 1.00 0.05 0.09 0.11 0.02 -0.17
Public -0.24 -0.16 -0.21 0.05 -0.18 0.05 0.05 1.00 0.17 -0.12 -0.04 0.38
Venture Backed 0.10 0.09 0.12 0.16 0.18 0.32 0.09 0.17 1.00 0.22 0.03 -0.05
Perc. Inside Directors 0.21 0.14 0.17 0.04 0.25 0.09 0.02 -0.04 0.03 0.20 1.00 -0.22
Log Employees -0.30 -0.26 -0.33 -0.20 -0.28 -0.11 -0.17 0.38 -0.05 -0.19 -0.22 1.00
33
Table 3: Advertised values and firm performance
This table reports the OLS coefficients of the regression of various performance measures (column headers) on a dummy equal to 1 if integrity is advertised as a
value in the Web page or on the Principal Component of the values promoted on the Web. The sample includes all the S&P500 companies in 2011. In all
regressions we control for the logarithm of revenues and industry fixed effects. Q is the Tobin’s Q, ROS is Net Income/Sales (Compustat), ACSI is the American
Consumer Satisfaction Index provided by ACSI, and Class action filed is the total number of class actions filed against the company since 1995 (from the
Stanford Securities Class Action Database). We report the R-squared and the marginal R-squared, where the latter is the difference between the R-squared and
the R-squared of a regression where we control only for Log Revenues and industry fixed effects. All regressions contain a constant term. Standard errors are in
parentheses and */**/*** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% level.
Tobin’s q ROS ACSI Class Action Filed
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Integrity Advertised -0.09 0.02 3.08*** 0.10
(0.13) (0.01) (1.01) (0.10)
Principal Component of web values -0.04 0.01 1.70*** 0.01
(0.07) (0.01) (0.57) (0.06)
Log Revenues -0.28*** -0.28*** -0.02*** -0.02*** -1.80*** -1.93*** 0.13*** 0.13***
(0.05) (0.05) (0.00) (0.00) (0.45) (0.46) (0.04) (0.04)
Constant 4.60*** 4.61*** 0.30*** 0.29*** 91.07*** 91.79*** -1.15*** -1.01***
(0.47) (0.48) (0.04) (0.05) (4.54) (4.52) (0.36) (0.37)
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Observations 497 497 500 500 106 106 165 165
R-squared 0.13 0.13 0.09 0.09 0.51 0.51 0.22 0.21
Marginal R-squared 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.05 0.00 0.00
34
Table 4: Integrity and Firms’ Outcomes
This table reports the correlation between firms’ values, as perceived by employees, and financial and managerial outcomes. Panel A reports the OLS coefficients of the
regressions of the Tobin’s Q (columns 1-4) and ROS (columns 5-8) on the cultural variables for the publicly listed companies in the Great Place to Work sample. Panel B repeats
the same specification respectively with Unionized Workers over Employees (columns 1-4) and Union Grievances over Unionized Workers (columns 5-8) as LHS variables for the
entire Great Place to Work sample. Panel C repeats the same specification using as dependent variable an indicator variable equal to one if the company was mentioned as a Top
100 company to work for in Universum Student Survey (columns 1-4) and job application over jobs filled (5-8) respectively. For a detailed description of each variable, see Table
1. All regressions contain controls for company age, size (log employment), the geographical location of the company (macro area in which the company headquarter is located),
Midwest is the baseline (omitted dummy) and a constant term; results with the full set of controls are reported in the online Appendix. Standard errors in parentheses, R-squared of
the regression, and */**/*** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% level.
Panel A:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
VARIABLES Tobin's q ROS
Managerial Integrity 1.417*** 2.880*** 0.041 0.174***
(0.422) (0.503) (0.030) (0.036)
Managerial Ethics 1.479*** 3.070*** 0.023 0.164***
(0.464) (0.536) (0.033) (0.039)
Safe Place 0.761 0.674 0.096** 0.111***
(0.557) (0.587) (0.040) (0.042)
Being Myself -2.232*** -2.358*** -0.176*** -0.159***
(0.769) (0.786) (0.055) (0.056)
Observations 368 368 368 368 382 382 382 382
R-squared 0.30 0.31 0.29 0.31 0.27 0.28 0.27 0.27
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Region FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Marginal R-squared 0.0236 0.0674 0.0214 0.0675 0.00392 0.0469 0.000989 0.0372
35
Panel B:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
VARIABLES Unionized Workers/ Employees Union Grievances/ Unionized Workers
Managerial
Integrity -0.038 -0.125*** -0.011 -0.019
(0.024) (0.033) (0.009) (0.013)
Managerial
Ethics -0.046* -0.171*** -0.013 -0.029**
(0.028) (0.034) (0.011) (0.013)
Safe Place -0.204*** -0.195*** -0.039*** -0.036***
(0.031) (0.033) (0.012) (0.013)
Being Myself -0.011 0.030 -0.018 -0.009
(0.050) (0.049) (0.019) (0.019)
Observations 664 664 664 664 664 664 664 664
R-squared 0.31 0.26 0.31 0.27 0.21 0.19 0.21 0.20
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Marginal Rsquared
0.00267 0.0165 0.00303 0.0285 0.00166 0.00295 0.00194 0.00603
Panel C:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
VARIABLES Top100 Universum Student Survey Job Applicants/Job Filled
Managerial Integrity 0.058 0.216*** -374.070* 458.932*
(0.057) (0.076) (201.908) (267.099)
Managerial Ethics 0.057 0.248*** -321.707 703.041**
(0.067) (0.080) (232.865) (279.483)
Safe Place 0.186** 0.183** 356.530 335.321
(0.073) (0.080) (255.535) (278.432)
Being Myself -0.141 -0.161 -1,272.079*** -1,515.361***
(0.114) (0.114) (404.817) (400.185)
Observations 678 678 678 678 589 589 589 589
R-squared 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.05
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Marginal R-squared 0.00118 0.00952 0.000856 0.0111 0.00599 0.00508 0.00334 0.0108
36
Table 5: Integrity, Ethics and Public Ownership
This table reports the correlation between firms’ values, as perceived by employees, and the firms’ governance. For each firm, the value of Managerial Integrity is calculated by
taking the mean of value among all the employees answering the survey. For a detailed description of each variable, see Table 1. All regressions contain controls for company age,
size (log employment), the geographical location of the company (macro area in which the company headquarter is located), Midwest is the baseline (omitted dummy), a dummy if
the founder is still around, a dummy for large layoffs, health insurance coverage, average number of perks and benefits in the firm, employees average characteristics (fraction of
managers, average age, fraction female, fraction black and fraction Hispanic) and a constant term; results with the full set of controls are reported in the online Appendix. Standard
errors in parentheses, R-squared of the regression, and */**/*** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% level.
Panel A:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
VARIABLES Managerial Integrity Managerial Ethics
Public -0.115*** -0.116*** -0.118*** -0.076*** -0.079*** -0.085***
(0.018) (0.018) (0.020) (0.016) (0.016) (0.018)
Company is venture backed 0.018 -0.105 0.027 -0.061
(0.029) (0.064) (0.025) (0.057)
Public*Venture Backed 0.151** 0.105*
(0.070) (0.062)
Safe Place 0.720*** 0.719*** 0.715*** 0.763*** 0.761*** 0.758***
(0.045) (0.045) (0.045) (0.040) (0.040) (0.040)
Constant 0.770** 0.777** 0.801*** 0.759*** 0.772*** 0.790***
(0.304) (0.304) (0.303) (0.268) (0.268) (0.268)
Observations 639 639 639 639 639 639
R-squared 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.58 0.59 0.59
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
37
Table 6: Impact of Corporate Governance, Ownership and CEO Compensation on Culture
This table reports the correlation between firms’ values and corporate governance, ownership variables for the publicly listed companies in the Great Place to Work sample. The
dependent variables are managerial integrity (columns 1-6) and managerial ethics (7-12) respectively.
For a detailed description of each variable, see Table 1. . All regressions contain controls for company age, size (log employment), the geographical location of the company
(macro area in which the company headquarter is located), Midwest is the baseline (omitted dummy), a dummy for large layoffs, health insurance coverage, average number of
perks and benefits in the firm, employees average characteristics (fraction of managers, average age, fraction female, fraction black and fraction Hispanic) and a constant term;
results with the full set of controls are reported in the online Appendix. Standard errors in parentheses, R-squared of the regression, and */**/*** indicate statistical significance at
the 10%, 5%, and 1% level.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
VARIABLES Managerial Integrity Managerial Ethics
Perc. Inside Directors 0.027 -0.032
(0.113) (0.109)
G-Index (last available
observation in risk metrics) 0.000 -0.002
(0.004) (0.004)
Perc Inst. Investors -0.018 -0.038
(0.034) (0.032)
Perc. Owners more 5 perc. -0.119** -0.061
(0.055) (0.054)
CEO Log(Total
compensation (K USD)) 0.018** 0.011
(0.009) (0.009)
CEO Variable to Total
Compensation 0.108* 0.070
(0.058) (0.056)
Being Myself 1.214*** 1.127*** 1.102*** 1.197*** 1.144*** 1.146*** 1.141*** 1.090*** 1.083*** 1.125*** 1.098*** 1.100***
(0.075) (0.077) (0.065) (0.074) (0.081) (0.081) (0.072) (0.072) (0.062) (0.073) (0.079) (0.079)
Constant -1.117*** -0.586 -0.490 -0.966** -0.706* -0.723* -0.304 0.046 0.081 -0.047 0.018 -0.000
(0.410) (0.407) (0.353) (0.409) (0.419) (0.421) (0.396) (0.379) (0.337) (0.401) (0.407) (0.409)
Observations 265 253 331 264 241 241 265 253 331 264 241 241
R-squared 0.73 0.72 0.68 0.74 0.72 0.72 0.72 0.72 0.69 0.72 0.70 0.70
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
38
Online Appendix
Table 4A: Integrity and Firms’ Outcomes
The table reports the correlation between firms’ values, as perceived by employees, and financial and managerial outcomes. Panel A reports the OLS coefficients of the regressions
of the Tobin’s Q (columns 1-4) and ROS (columns 5-8) on the cultural variables for the publicly listed companies in the Great Place to Work sample. Panel B repeats the same
specification respectively with Unionized Workers over Employees (columns 1-4) and Union Grievances over Unionized Workers (columns 5-8) as LHS variables for the entire
Great Place to Work sample. Panel C repeats the same specification using as dependent variable an indicator variable equal to one if the company was mentioned as a Top 100
company to work for in Universum Student Survey (columns 1-4) and job application over jobs filled (5-8) respectively. For a detailed description of each variable, see Table 1. In
all regressions we control for the geographical location of the company (macro area in which the company headquarter is located), Midwest is the baseline (omitted dummy). All
regressions contain a constant term, standard errors in parentheses, R-squared of the regression, and */**/*** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% level.
Panel A:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
VARIABLES Tobin's q ROS
Managerial Integrity 1.417*** 2.880*** 0.041 0.174***
(0.422) (0.503) (0.030) (0.036)
Managerial Ethics 1.479*** 3.070*** 0.023 0.164***
(0.464) (0.536) (0.033) (0.039)
Safe Place 0.761 0.674 0.096** 0.111***
(0.557) (0.587) (0.040) (0.042)
Being Myself -2.232*** -2.358*** -0.176*** -0.159***
(0.769) (0.786) (0.055) (0.056)
Company Age 0.001 -0.000 0.000 -0.001 0.000 -0.000 0.000 -0.000
(0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
Log Employees -0.087 -0.123* -0.094 -0.131** -0.006 -0.009* -0.007 -0.009*
(0.066) (0.066) (0.066) (0.066) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005)
South -0.071 -0.129 -0.069 -0.121 -0.006 -0.012 -0.006 -0.012
(0.210) (0.208) (0.211) (0.208) (0.015) (0.015) (0.015) (0.015)
North-East -0.077 -0.101 -0.062 -0.070 -0.012 -0.014 -0.011 -0.013
(0.214) (0.212) (0.215) (0.212) (0.015) (0.015) (0.015) (0.015)
West 0.425* 0.451** 0.455** 0.509** 0.000 0.001 0.001 0.004
(0.224) (0.222) (0.224) (0.222) (0.016) (0.016) (0.016) (0.016)
Non Continental -0.637 -0.737 -0.666 -0.787 -0.086 -0.097 -0.084 -0.099
(0.973) (0.963) (0.975) (0.963) (0.071) (0.070) (0.071) (0.071)
Constant -6.573*** 1.082 -6.870*** -0.112 -0.491*** 0.219 -0.484*** 0.128
(2.244) (2.446) (2.257) (2.413) (0.183) (0.205) (0.184) (0.204)
Observations 368 368 368 368 382 382 382 382
R-squared 0.30 0.31 0.29 0.31 0.27 0.28 0.27 0.27
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Marginal R-squared 0.0236 0.0674 0.0214 0.0675 0.00392 0.0469 0.000989 0.0372
39
Panel B:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
VARIABLES Unionized Workers/Employees Union Grievances/ Unionized Workers
Managerial Integrity -0.038 -0.125*** -0.011 -0.019
(0.024) (0.033) (0.009) (0.013)
Managerial Ethics -0.046* -0.171*** -0.013 -0.029**
(0.028) (0.034) (0.011) (0.013)
Safe Place -0.204*** -0.195*** -0.039*** -0.036***
(0.031) (0.033) (0.012) (0.013)
Being Myself -0.011 0.030 -0.018 -0.009
(0.050) (0.049) (0.019) (0.019)
Company Age 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000***
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
Log Employees 0.013*** 0.012*** 0.013*** 0.012*** 0.003* 0.002 0.003* 0.002
(0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002)
South -0.012 -0.008 -0.013 -0.010 0.002 0.002 0.001 0.002
(0.013) (0.013) (0.013) (0.013) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005)
North-East -0.006 -0.004 -0.006 -0.004 0.004 0.005 0.004 0.005
(0.013) (0.013) (0.013) (0.013) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005)
West 0.031** 0.029** 0.031** 0.028** -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.003
(0.014) (0.014) (0.014) (0.014) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005)
Non Continental 0.065 0.075 0.067 0.079 0.010 0.012 0.011 0.013
(0.082) (0.084) (0.082) (0.084) (0.032) (0.032) (0.032) (0.032)
Constant 0.907*** 0.376** 0.907*** 0.408** 0.196*** 0.129* 0.197*** 0.132*
(0.166) (0.184) (0.166) (0.180) (0.065) (0.070) (0.065) (0.069)
Observations 664 664 664 664 664 664 664 664
R-squared 0.31 0.26 0.31 0.27 0.21 0.19 0.21 0.20
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Marginal R-squared 0.00267 0.0165 0.00303 0.0285 0.00166 0.00295 0.00194 0.00603
40
Panel C:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
VARIABLES Top100 Universum Student Survey Job Applicants/Job Filled
Managerial Integrity 0.058 0.216*** -374.070* 458.932*
(0.057) (0.076) (201.908) (267.099)
Managerial Ethics 0.057 0.248*** -321.707 703.041**
(0.067) (0.080) (232.865) (279.483)
Safe Place 0.186** 0.183** 356.530 335.321
(0.073) (0.080) (255.535) (278.432)
Being Myself -0.141 -0.161 -1,272.079*** -1,515.361***
(0.114) (0.114) (404.817) (400.185)
Company Age 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 -0.977 -1.364 -0.840 -1.567*
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.903) (0.902) (0.901) (0.903)
Log Employees 0.108*** 0.108*** 0.107*** 0.107*** 1.282 -4.804 7.023 -7.684
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) (33.385) (33.212) (33.119) (32.995)
South -0.030 -0.037 -0.030 -0.034 96.016 59.727 89.028 69.740
(0.031) (0.031) (0.031) (0.031) (109.645) (109.068) (109.764) (108.549)
North-East 0.062** 0.059* 0.063** 0.060* -56.289 -70.654 -56.824 -66.217
(0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (107.465) (106.610) (107.615) (106.312)
West 0.043 0.044 0.043 0.047 -49.091 -34.258 -53.312 -27.784
(0.033) (0.033) (0.033) (0.033) (116.318) (115.501) (116.475) (115.184)
Non Continental -0.144 -0.156 -0.145 -0.161 -12.842 -42.500 -13.325 -62.235
(0.197) (0.198) (0.197) (0.198) (649.540) (644.827) (650.629) (642.982)
Constant -2.025*** -1.202*** -2.018*** -1.282*** -495.239 3,248.257** -555.423 3,203.217**
(0.399) (0.429) (0.399) (0.423) (1,349.262) (1,455.824) (1,350.916) (1,430.918)
Observations 678 678 678 678 589 589 589 589
R-squared 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.05
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Marginal R-squared 0.00118 0.00952 0.000856 0.0111 0.00599 0.00508 0.00334 0.0108
41
Table 5A: Integrity, Ethics and Firms’ Governance
The table reports the correlation between firms’ values, as perceived by employees, and the firms’ governance. For each firm, the value of Managerial Integrity is calculated by
taking the mean of value among all the employees answering the survey. For a detailed description of each variable, see Table 1. All regressions contain a constant term, standard
errors in parentheses, R-squared of the regression, and */**/*** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% level.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
VARIABLES Managerial Integrity Managerial Ethics
Public -0.114*** -0.116*** -0.124*** -0.075*** -0.078*** -0.084***
(0.018) (0.018) (0.018) (0.016) (0.016) (0.016)
Company is venture backed 0.017 -0.101 0.027 -0.061
(0.029) (0.064) (0.025) (0.057)
Public*Venture Backed 0.142** 0.105*
(0.069) (0.061)
Safe Place 0.722*** 0.721*** 0.717*** 0.766*** 0.764*** 0.761***
(0.045) (0.045) (0.045) (0.040) (0.040) (0.040)
Founder Around 0.022 0.021 0.019 0.009 0.008 0.006
(0.019) (0.019) (0.019) (0.017) (0.017) (0.017)
Log Employees -0.019*** -0.018*** -0.017** -0.018*** -0.017*** -0.017***
(0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.006) (0.006) (0.006)
Company Age 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
Layoff -0.035* -0.035* -0.036* -0.043*** -0.043*** -0.043***
(0.019) (0.019) (0.018) (0.016) (0.016) (0.016)
N. coverage of the health insurance 0.006 0.006 0.005 0.009 0.008 0.008
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011) (0.009) (0.009) (0.009)
N. onsite perks and benefits 0.006** 0.006** 0.006* 0.005* 0.004 0.004
(0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003)
Average Tenure -0.007 -0.007 -0.007 0.002 0.002 0.002
(0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004)
Manager (Survey Average) 0.094 0.096 0.097 0.108* 0.111* 0.112*
(0.066) (0.066) (0.066) (0.058) (0.058) (0.058)
Age (Survey Average) -0.009*** -0.009*** -0.009*** -0.008*** -0.008*** -0.008***
(0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003)
Fraction of Female (Survey
Average)
-0.037 -0.035 -0.028 -0.033 -0.031 -0.026
42
(0.055) (0.055) (0.055) (0.049) (0.049) (0.049)
Fraction of Black (Survey Average) -0.272* -0.267* -0.275* -0.318** -0.310** -0.316**
(0.147) (0.148) (0.147) (0.130) (0.130) (0.130)
Fraction of Hispanic (Survey
Average)
0.167* 0.172* 0.181* 0.095 0.102 0.109
(0.095) (0.096) (0.095) (0.084) (0.084) (0.084)
South 0.049** 0.049** 0.051** 0.030 0.030 0.031
(0.022) (0.022) (0.022) (0.019) (0.019) (0.019)
North-East -0.004 -0.004 -0.004 -0.008 -0.008 -0.008
(0.021) (0.021) (0.021) (0.018) (0.018) (0.018)
West 0.022 0.020 0.022 0.008 0.004 0.006
(0.023) (0.023) (0.023) (0.020) (0.020) (0.020)
Non Continental 0.055 0.055 0.056 0.084 0.083 0.084
(0.132) (0.133) (0.132) (0.117) (0.117) (0.117)
Constant 0.759** 0.767** 0.791*** 0.745*** 0.757*** 0.775***
(0.303) (0.303) (0.303) (0.268) (0.268) (0.268)
Observations 639 639 639 639 639 639
R-squared 0.55 0.55 0.55 0.58 0.58 0.59
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
43
Table 6A: Impact of Corporate Governance, Ownership and CEO Compensation on Culture
The table reports the correlation between firms’ values and corporate governance, ownership variables for the publicly listed companies in the Great Place to Work sample. The
dependent variables are managerial integrity (columns 1-6) and managerial ethics (7-12) respectively.
For a detailed description of each variable, see Table 1. All regressions contain a constant term, standard errors in parentheses, R-squared of the regression, and */**/*** indicate
statistical significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% level.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
VARIABLES Managerial Integrity Managerial Ethics
Perc. Inside Directors -0.029 -0.093
(0.105) (0.100)
G-Index (last available observation in risk metrics) 0.001 -0.002
(0.004) (0.003)
Perc Inst. Investors -0.027 -0.049*
(0.030) (0.028)
Perc. Owners more 5 perc. -0.104** -0.058
(0.052) (0.050)
CEO Log(Total compensation (K USD)) 0.021** 0.014*
(0.009) (0.008)
CEO Variable to Total Compensation 0.115** 0.084
(0.055) (0.053)
Being Myself 1.191*** 1.131*** 1.113*** 1.169*** 1.163*** 1.161*** 1.146*** 1.099*** 1.091*** 1.125*** 1.114*** 1.112***
(0.071) (0.074) (0.059) (0.070) (0.076) (0.076) (0.067) (0.068) (0.055) (0.067) (0.073) (0.073)
Log Employees -0.025*** -0.020** -0.016** -0.027*** -0.031*** -0.027*** -0.024*** -0.018** -0.017** -0.024*** -0.029*** -0.026***
44
(0.009) (0.009) (0.008) (0.009) (0.010) (0.009) (0.008) (0.008) (0.007) (0.008) (0.009) (0.009)
Company Age 0.000* 0.000* 0.000 0.000 0.000** 0.000** 0.001** 0.001*** 0.000** 0.000** 0.001*** 0.001***
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
Layoff 0.001 0.003 -0.008 0.007 -0.005 -0.003 -0.011 -0.007 -0.012 -0.004 0.000 0.002
(0.020) (0.020) (0.018) (0.020) (0.021) (0.021) (0.019) (0.019) (0.017) (0.019) (0.020) (0.020)
Number of coverages of the health insurance -0.002 0.005 0.009 -0.003 0.013 0.014 -0.005 0.002 0.008 -0.005 0.004 0.005
(0.012) (0.012) (0.011) (0.011) (0.012) (0.012) (0.011) (0.011) (0.010) (0.011) (0.011) (0.011)
Number of onsite percks and benefits 0.003 0.003 0.003 0.003 0.003 0.004 0.004 0.003 0.004 0.004 0.002 0.003
(0.004) (0.004) (0.003) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.003) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004)
Average Tenure 0.002 -0.001 -0.001 0.003 0.001 -0.001 0.011** 0.007 0.009** 0.011** 0.012** 0.011*
(0.005) (0.006) (0.005) (0.005) (0.006) (0.006) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005)
Manager (Survey Average) 0.010 -0.003 -0.044 0.015 0.036 0.051 0.070 0.053 0.020 0.079 0.053 0.061
(0.085) (0.094) (0.080) (0.084) (0.095) (0.095) (0.081) (0.087) (0.075) (0.081) (0.091) (0.090)
Age (Survey Average) -0.007* -0.006 -0.007** -0.007* -0.006 -0.005 -0.009** -0.008** -0.009*** -0.009** -0.010** -0.009**
(0.004) (0.004) (0.003) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.003) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004)
Fraction of Female (Survey Average) 0.134** 0.185*** 0.107* 0.128* 0.078 0.075 0.080 0.157** 0.077 0.082 0.102 0.099
(0.067) (0.070) (0.061) (0.066) (0.068) (0.068) (0.064) (0.065) (0.057) (0.064) (0.065) (0.065)
Fraction of Black (Survey Average) 0.212 0.316 0.181 0.227 0.394* 0.437* -0.010 0.075 -0.068 -0.012 0.046 0.078
(0.226) (0.228) (0.201) (0.223) (0.230) (0.232) (0.215) (0.210) (0.188) (0.214) (0.219) (0.221)
Fraction of Hispanic (Survey Average) 0.294 -0.137 -0.041 0.292 -0.143 -0.158 0.161 -0.207 -0.043 0.154 -0.148 -0.158
(0.196) (0.152) (0.114) (0.195) (0.142) (0.142) (0.187) (0.140) (0.107) (0.187) (0.136) (0.136)
South -0.003 0.005 0.022 -0.009 -0.004 -0.004 -0.002 0.002 0.027 -0.007 0.011 0.011
(0.026) (0.027) (0.023) (0.026) (0.027) (0.027) (0.024) (0.025) (0.022) (0.025) (0.026) (0.026)
45
North-East 0.003 0.018 0.014 -0.004 -0.012 -0.010 -0.002 0.010 0.005 -0.007 0.008 0.009
(0.025) (0.027) (0.023) (0.025) (0.027) (0.027) (0.024) (0.025) (0.022) (0.024) (0.026) (0.026)
West 0.026 0.028 0.029 0.022 0.001 0.002 0.004 0.007 0.020 0.003 0.009 0.009
(0.027) (0.029) (0.025) (0.027) (0.028) (0.029) (0.026) (0.027) (0.023) (0.026) (0.027) (0.027)
Non Continental -0.183 0.077 0.061 -0.181 0.062 0.069 -0.135 0.088 0.079 -0.128 0.053 0.058
(0.177) (0.164) (0.112) (0.175) (0.158) (0.158) (0.168) (0.151) (0.105) (0.168) (0.151) (0.151)
Constant -0.935** -0.772* -0.676* -0.807** -0.804** -1.030** -0.285 -0.253 -0.025 -0.208 -0.076 -0.072
(0.380) (0.442) (0.361) (0.382) (0.396) (0.442) (0.362) (0.408) (0.296) (0.366) (0.379) (0.379)
Observations 290 273 374 289 262 262 290 273 374 289 262 262
R-squared 0.73 0.72 0.69 0.74 0.72 0.72 0.72 0.72 0.70 0.72 0.71 0.71
Industry FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes