April 30, 2022
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Culture Quant Framework |
Company culture, the shared values and behaviors that define how employees collaborate to create value for the enterprise, remains an enigma in the field of investing. Analysts intuitively understand its influence on investment outcomes and nod knowingly when presented with examples of effective or bad cultures. But measuring culture is a subjective exercise that is open to wide interpretation, even among employees at the same company. Culture has defied quantification at a time when researchers are numerically modeling every factor that has an impact on investment performance.
In the late 1970s, tangible investments were nearly twice those of intangible investments. Today, intangible investments are roughly one and a half times those of tangible investments. This shift has transformed the nature of business.
We believe our economy’s transformation from tangible to intangible assets is secular and early in its course. As a result, investors will increasingly recognize culture as a critical determinant of value creation. That means it will be the subject of critical analysis and measurement in years to come.
Given this reality, we reviewed legacy frameworks to quantify culture and found them to be well intentioned but generally inconsistent. They were also far too broad in their scope. We believe a new approach can add value. We studied how KPIs have evolved, how they are used, and what impact they have had. Our goal is to simplify the complex topic and to create a standard set of tools that investors can use to evaluate a company’s intangible assets.
We have identified employee retention as a significant indicator of culture.
Click on the PDF to learn about our quantitative approach to measuring culture and the framework we developed.