There can be a large gap between how many reviewers discuss a cultural topic and how many use the topic's specific label word. In the Culture 500 data, nearly 80,000 employees discussed integrity in their reviews, but fewer than 5,000 used the specific word.

Topic-Word Coverage Gap in Glassdoor Culture Reviews

The varied language in Glassdoor reviews paints a nuanced picture of corporate culture but defies simplistic textual analysis. When the Culture 500 team initially applied standard natural language processing tools to the Glassdoor data, the results were disappointing.

Limitations of Standard NLP for Culture 500 Analysis

When describing culture, Glassdoor reviewers use rich and varied language, including slang, idioms, acronyms, buzzwords, and colorful phrases. For a topic such as integrity, employees used many synonyms, antonyms, idioms, and slang terms.

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Glassdoor reviewers use rich and varied language when describing culture. That language paints a nuanced picture of corporate culture, but it also defies simplistic approaches to textual analysis.

Glassdoor Open-Text Reviews for Culture Insight

MIT Sloan Management Review project page on measuring culture in leading companies, including the Culture 500 dataset. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/measuring-culture-in-leading-companies/

MIT Sloan Management Review

In the MIT SMR/Glassdoor Culture 500 analysis, 93% of employees discuss some element of culture in their reviews, and 41% discuss one or more of the Big Nine values.

Prevalence of Culture Discussion in Glassdoor Reviews

A single Glassdoor review could reflect one employee's idiosyncratic view, but aggregating hundreds or thousands of reviews paints an accurate picture of a company's culture.

Aggregating Glassdoor Reviews for Accurate Culture Assessment

A common concern with online reviews is that they can skew toward a polarized distribution, with many glowing reviews, a disproportionate number of extremely negative reviews, and relatively few moderate opinions. This pattern is documented across settings such as Amazon products and Yelp restaurants, and it occurs when users with extremely positive or extremely negative views are especially motivated to write reviews.

Polarization Risk in Online Reviews

Reviews might not present an accurate picture of organizational culture if companies incentivize or pressure employees to write glowing evaluations.

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