Remember what we said as we debunked the chapter-opening myth. You want to look for a culture where you will fit in and thrive. An organization’s culture has an effect on what employees do, depending on how strong, or weak, the culture is. Strong cultures—those in which the key values are deeply held and widely shared—have a greater influence on employees than do weaker cultures. The more employees accept the organization’s key values and the greater their commitment to those values, the stronger the culture is. Most organizations have moderate to strong cultures; that is, there is relatively high agreement on what’s important, what defines “good” employee behavior, what it takes to get ahead, and so forth. The stronger a culture becomes, the more it affects what employees do and the way managers plan, organize, lead, and control.37

Also, in organizations with a strong culture, that culture can substitute for the rules and regulations that formally guide employees. In essence, strong cultures can create predictability, orderliness, and consistency without the need for written documentation. Therefore, the stronger an organization’s culture, the less managers need to be concerned with developing formal rules and regulations. Instead, those guides will be internalized in employees when they accept the organization’s culture. If, on the other hand, an organization’s culture is weak—if no dominant shared values are present—its effect on employee behavior is less clear.