From tension to trust: The role of corporate culture in easing labor relations

Abstract This article presents the first extensive empirical exploration into how corporate culture impacts labor relations. The study finds that a strong corporate culture correlates with improved labor relations across multiple dimensions: firms with a strong corporate culture experience a decreased likelihood of employees filing charges of unfair labor practices, achieve higher ratings on employee satisfaction surveys, exhibit a lower likelihood of unionization, and show reduced employee efforts towards unionization through National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections. These findings are robust and appear to be unaffected by endogeneity, but rather indicate a probable causal relationship where a strong corporate culture plays a critical role in enhancing labor relations.