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This research note examines the feasibility of using corporate Web sites as an indicator of corporate culture. This is done by comparing the Web sites of 12 multinational companies in two distinct business sectors-food services and pharmaceuticals-across 23 subdimensions of corporate culture. Differences in the corporate cultures of these companies, as observed in their Web sites, are then discussed.
Keywords: corporate Web sites; corporate culture; corporate climate
For more than a quarter century, social scientists in a variety of fields including management (Cappelli & Hamori, 2005; Denison, 1996; Gordon, 1991; O'Reilly, Chatman, & Caldwell, 1991; Want, 2003), psychology (Dunnette & Hough, 1991), anthropology (Keesing, 1974), and sociology (Chelte, Hess, Fanelli, & Ferris, 1989; Fine, 1984) have researched and written extensively on the concept of organizational culture or climate. Although there has not been complete agreement between scholars as to what dimensions or components compose this concept (Detert, Schroeder, & Mauriel, 2000), there has been some consensus as to how corporate culture can be measured. In this regard, researchers generally have employed what might best be termed an internal perspective, for want of a better term. That is to say, they have measured a company's corporate culture by either surveying employees as to their perceptions of their company's values, business practices, and so forth (Hofstede, 1983; Meyerson & Martin, 1987), or by analyzing various internally distributed documents, such as a company's mission statement, goals, strategic plan, and so forth (e.g., Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders, 1990; Pettigrew, 1979).
However, corporate culture is no longer invisible to the market place (Want, 2003). Given, for example, recent trends in information technology and internet commerce, a company's culture is now often communicated through its corporate Web site. There, upon careful analysis, are found a company's values, belief system, business practices, and general market strategy, along with other elements of its culture. By studying the externally communicated culture of a company, researchers are no longer dependent on access to employee feedback or company documents to analyze a company's culture. Rather, researchers may now access corporate Web sites with impunity, making whatever comparisons across or within companies they deem worthwhile or interesting.
Beyond mere convenience and ease of access, analysis of externally communicated information, when combined with internally collected data,...