Are Less Hierarchical Firms Organized Around Stronger Cultures? Evidence From Big Data

Research Summary: Are less hierarchical firms organized around stronger cultures instead? The authors analyze 1.5million employee reviews on Glassdoor.com from 23,000 US-based firms, alongside data on managerial hierarchy estimated from 42 million professional social media profiles. Their findings confirm a negative association between managerial hierarchy and organizational culture strength. They explore two potential explanations for this association: Functional equivalence between the two, and culture fragmentation caused by manage-rial hierarchy. Multiple correlational tests show sup-port for functional equivalence as a plausible explanation for the observed negative correlation. The authors findings enhance our understanding of the complex relationships between organizational structure and culture utilizing Big Data methods.