Two people sitting together discussing organizational culture

Organizational Culture

Most leaders recognize how critical a high-performance business culture is to their organization’s success. Most also struggle to achieve it. BCG helps clients articulate what their organizational culture should be.

Developing the right business culture is essential to achieving sustainable competitive advantage: Companies with a purpose-driven organizational culture outperform their peers. They attract and retain a diverse workforce with the highest-caliber skills. They empower employees to collaborate and innovate in agile ways—and inspire them to go the extra mile. They align workers and resources to advance strategic goals.

Our approach, based on cutting-edge behavioral science, helps leaders understand how they can personally activate a new organizational culture—and permanently embed it within the organization using our proven change management strategies and tools.

What Are the Characteristics of Organizational Culture?


Our Approach to Organizational Culture

To achieve a high-performance business culture, BCG’s organizational culture consulting experts ensure that a company’s purpose, strategy, and culture are closely interconnected.

  • Purpose is an organization’s WHY. It articulates why the company’s work matters to the world. It is the foundation on which the company’s mission, vision, values, and business culture are built.
  • Strategy defines WHAT the organization must do to succeed. An aligned business culture supports strategic goals, whereas a fragmented culture undermines them.
  • Culture determines HOW work gets done. What do people say and do around others? What traits and behaviors does the organization signal as valuable by rewarding and reinforcing them through promotions, funding, and incentives?

With these forces aligned, a company gains the vision it needs to remake itself through cultural change. Driving diversity and inclusion is a critical component of this journey to organizational culture change.

Our Clients’ Success in Organizational Culture





Our Solutions for Organizational Culture Change

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BrightHouse is a BCG company and a global creative consultancy. We help organizations uncover their timeless business purpose—the reason they exist—so they can grow their people, profits, and social impact.

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Building Diverse and Inclusive Cultures is a key component of our organizational culture offerings. Companies can’t capture the real value of a diverse workforce until they create an organizational culture that welcomes everyone—truly everyone—to participate.

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BCG’s Organization Design Enablement Center ensures that large-scale reorganizations lead to higher-performing organizations.

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Our Articulate, Activate, Embed framework allows clients to articulate what a leading organizational culture looks like, activate new behaviors to make it a reality, and embed and reinforce target behaviors to make sure it sticks.

Explore Our Insights on Organizational Culture

The Importance of Diverse Boards

Ulrike Schwarz-Runer, a managing director and senior partner and BCG's general counsel, shares three key reasons why diversity in the boardroom is so important.


Meet BCG’s Organizational Culture Consultants

Our organizational culture consulting team helps clients align their purpose, strategy, and culture to improve business performance. Here are some of our experts on the topic.