Amir Goldberg
Stanford University

From the schoolyard to the boardroom, the pressures of cultural assimilation
pervade all walks of social life. These pressures of cultural alignment are
particularly pronounced in formal organizations. Yet people vary considerably in
the capacity to fit in culturally, and their fit can wax and wane over time. Why
are some people successful in cultural assimilation, whereas others are not?

We argue that to answer this question it is necessary to lift the curtain that
separates between the backstage (cognitive) and frontstage (behavioral)
dimensions of cultural fit. We theorize that the backstage comprises two
analytically distinct dimensions: perceptual accuracy, which is an individual's
success in deciphering the cultural code, and value congruence, which is the
extent to which an individual's private beliefs and values are aligned with
those prevalent among her peers. We further hypothesize that perceptual accuracy
matters for normative compliance on the forntstage, whereas value congruence is
predictive of a person's self-identification and long-term attachment to the
organization. Moreover, we argue that the ability to read the code is a matter
of context, above and beyond differences in individuals' preferences or
psychological capabilities. That is, we contend that the quality of one's
peers, especially these peers' degree of normatively compliant behavior,
affects the focal individual's perceptual accuracy and resultant capacity for
culturally compliant behavior.

To evaluate these ideas, we draw on a mixed-methods research design that
includes survey data, eight years of internal email communication, and personnel
records from a mid-sized technology firm. We use the tools of computational
linguistics and machine learning in two ways. First, we develop a measure of
frontstage cultural fit based on the linguistic style that employees use in
email communications with their colleagues and validate it using the survey.
Second, we transform the cross-sectional measures of backstage cultural fit,
which were assessed through the survey instrument, into longitudinal measures.
We also take advantage of a reorganization that produced quasi-exogenous shifts
in employees' peer groups to recover causal estimates of social influence, that
is, of how a focal actor's perceptual accuracy and frontstage behavioral fit
changed in response to essentially random changes in the peers to which she was
connected.

Our findings indicate that while individuals adapt their perceptions in response
to their peers‰Ûª behavior, exhibiting a secular increase in perceptual accuracy
over time, their values remain mostly stable. As perceptual accuracy increases
so does one‰Ûªs level of behavioral alignment. Though a substantial proportion
of the variance in frontstage behavioral fit is explained by stable differences
between individuals, an equally sizeable amount is explained by differences in
individuals‰Ûª networks. Employees whose peers behave compliantly are themselves
more likely to exhibit cultural fit in their behaviors. Findings from this
investigation shed new light on the relationship between cognition and behavior
and the interpersonal transmission of culture.