Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose

9. Culture—The Secret Ingredient

This chapter is about FoEs' strongest competitive difference: their corporate cultures. The topic of corporate culture is extremely well-trodden territory; what new can be said about the subject? Googling "corporate culture" brings up more than ten million entries. Amazon lists more than 8,700 titles devoted to corporate culture. Thousands of articles have mulled over the subject. Thus, it is not our purpose here to cover ground well worn by others. Instead, our time is more profitably spent identifying and describing attributes of FoEs' corporate cultures that play a decisive role in their success.

The Primacy of Culture

Earlier in the book, we raised this question: "Which stakeholder matters the most?" The most ...