An investigation of the role of values and purpose in fast-growing Australian businesses

The impact of organisational culture on business performance has been much researched (e.g. Kotter and Heskett, 1992). A strong culture has been identified as a form of competitive advantage that can be hard to imitate (e.g. Zahra et al. 2004). Collins and Porras (1994) found that organisational culture based on three to six 'core values' in pursuit of a long-term 'core purpose' gave companies a long-term strategic advantage over their competitors. They further found that the core values were often based on the personal values of the founders, consistent with previous research (e.g. Schein, 1983). Other researches have argued that a strong culture can be a disadvantage (e.g. Foster and Kaplan, 2005) in that it can prevent a company from adapting to changed circumstances. One reason why a strong organisational culture that unites the company’s workforce can be a competitive advantage is that such cultures are rare. This leads to the question of why some companies evolve strong culture while the majority do not. Strong organisational cultures have been found to be embedded relatively early in the development of a company, before they become large (e.g. see Collins and Porras, 1994: 79). Thus we have chosen to focus our studies on early stage, fast-growing companies, and to focus on core values and core purpose as a construct for assessing the strength of organisational culture.