organizational culture

Definition

The shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that characterize how work gets done in a company. It's supposedly defined by leadership's vision statements but actually determined by what behavior gets rewarded and what gets ignored.

Example Usage

Our organizational culture officially values work-life balance, but the VP sends emails at 2 AM and promotes people who respond immediately.

Origin

Formalized as a business concept in the 1980s, building on anthropological and sociological frameworks

Fun Fact

Peter Drucker allegedly said 'culture eats strategy for breakfast,' though there's no actual evidence he said it—yet executives quote it religiously.

Source: Organizational behavior and development terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

assessments

The corporate ritual of evaluating, measuring, and quantifying things—whether it's employee performance, property value, or how badly a project is going. It's the professional wrapper around judgment calls, complete with forms, metrics, and the illusion of objectivity. Everyone loves talking about "360-degree assessments" until they're the ones being assessed.

👥 Human Resources

Beginner

side hustle

A secondary job or income stream employees pursue outside their primary employment, ranging from Uber driving to freelance consulting. It's what used to be called 'having two jobs' before we rebranded poverty as entrepreneurship.

👥 Human Resources

Intermediate

nine-box grid

A talent assessment tool that plots employees on performance versus potential, creating nine categories from 'star' to 'why are they still here?' It's how companies decide who gets promoted and who gets managed out, all on a tidy 3x3 grid.

👥 Human Resources

Intermediate

Talent Acquisition

The fancy name for hiring that makes recruiting sound like a military operation or an art heist. We don't just post jobs -- we acquire talent, as if candidates are rare artifacts being extracted from rival organizations under cover of darkness.

👥 Human Resources

Advanced

garden leave

A notice period where departing employees remain on payroll but are barred from working or accessing company resources, preventing them from sharing secrets with competitors. Paid time off for being too dangerous to keep around.

👥 Human Resources

Beginner

selection

In HR-speak, the allegedly objective process of choosing the 'best' candidate from a pool of applicants, theoretically based on qualifications rather than golf handicaps. In evolutionary biology, it's nature's brutal but effective hiring process where the most fit survive. Both involve a lot of comparison, some unconscious bias, and outcomes that won't please everyone.

👥 Human Resources

Translate This Term

See “organizational culture” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Advanced

detente

The diplomatic equivalent of agreeing to stop glaring at each other across the room, typically between countries that we...