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    Birds of a Feather ... Enforce Social Norms? Interactions Among Culture, Norms, and Strategy
    10 Oct 2019Working Paper Summaries

    Birds of a Feather ... Enforce Social Norms? Interactions Among Culture, Norms, and Strategy

    by Hongyi Li and Eric J. Van den Steen
    Does culture eat strategy for breakfast? By analyzing the role of a company's social norms—how they develop and why people reinforce them, despite their personal beliefs—this paper offers new insights about the power of culture.
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    Author Abstract

    This paper analyzes how shared beliefs and preferences (or values) cause the emergence of social norms; why people may enforce norms that go against their own beliefs and preferences/values; and how this may cause a disconnect to develop between the organization's norms and its underlying beliefs and preferences. We further show, among other things, that such social norms are more likely in attractive organizations, for behaviors that have modest personal consequences, and in organizations where employees depend on others' choices to a moderate degree. We finally discuss how these mechanisms help our understanding of culture change and of the interaction between culture and strategy. We argue that culture is not only an input to strategy, but also a substitute and a potential competitor.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: October 2019
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #20-045
    • Faculty Unit(s): Strategy
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    Eric J. Van den Steen
    Eric J. Van den Steen
    Royal Little Professor of Business Administration
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