Where does culture come from? -- An investigation of the origination and evolution of one startup’s culture and a test of Schein’s theory of organizational culture formation.

Thumbnail Image

Files

master_Thompson_Samuel_2021.pdf (386.41 KB)

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

School of Business | Master's thesis
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.

Authors

Date

2021

Department

Johtamisen laitos

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management

Language

en

Pages

34

Series

Abstract

The culture of a company is almost universally accepted as an important factor contributing to the success or failure of a company. Where culture originates from and how it develops is therefore an important concept to understand. The most accepted theory on the subject is posited by Edgar Schein who states that, “the ultimate organizational culture will always reflect the complex interaction of (1) the assumptions and theories that founders bring to the group initially and (2) what the group learns subsequently from its own experiences”. Despite being mostly accepted there is little empirical evidence to support the theory. To fill the research gap, this study aims to investigate the phenomenon of organizational culture formation and answer the question, How does culture form and where does it originate from? A conceptual framework was created using the theory described above and was then tested using a startup as the case study. In total five individuals from the startup were interviewed, which included the two founders. The data was analyzed to determine the core aspects of the company culture and where they originated from. The results were then cross referenced with the original conceptual framework to determine if they supported or refuted Schein’s theory. The results of the study mostly supported the initial framework except for two key findings. The first finding was that the founders’ initial beliefs and assumptions that they bring with them into a company can be further divided into two separate categories. The first one being previous learnings the founders had before starting the company and the second one being the founders’ innate qualities or personality traits. The second finding is that there is an additional category of cultural influence that is not captured in the initial framework which consists of elements outside of the internal control of the company such as the product the company sells, the size of the company, and the markets it operates in.

Description

Thesis advisor

O'Shea, Gregory

Keywords

organizational culture, organizational culture formation, startups, entrepreneurship, founders

Other note

Citation

Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202202061725

Collections

[gradu] Kauppakorkeakoulu / BIZ