Academic Seminar Series
Set in Stone: The Persistence and Origins of Corporate Culture
Kai Li
University of British Columbia, Sauder School of Business
– Time:
–
Abstract
This paper studies the evolution and origins of corporate culture, distinguishing firm-level values and norms from insiders’ preferences. We document highly persistent cultures, with most variation explained by firm fixed effects. Using detailed founder data, we show that initial culture reflects founders’ cultural heritage, the racial diversity of their birthplaces, and the recessions they experienced at career start. We present evidence that firm–CEO and firm–employee value matching, together with culture’s influence on CEOs, reinforces persistence via selection, attrition, and workplace norms. Our results highlight founding imprint and leadership/employee matching as central to the enduring nature of corporate culture.
Dr. Li, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Class of 2022), holds the Canada Research Chair in Corporate Governance and the W. Maurice Young Endowed Chair in Finance at the UBC Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. She is Managing Editor of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Her current research projects include: (1) corporate culture, (2) machine learning in finance, and (3) green innovation. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, the Journal of International Business Studies, and many other leading journals in finance and economics. She is a Senior Fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research and a Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute. She is a Director of the American Finance Association, a former Chair of the Academic Female Finance Committee, a former Director of the Western Finance Association, a former Council Member of the Society of Financial Studies, and a former Trustee of the Financial Association International. She serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, the Journal of Financial Stability, and the Pacific-Basin Finance Journal.
This seminar will be online on Zoom. Click here to attend
