Organizational culture and sustainability in turbulent environments. Insights from a case-study of a large mining MNC in a Latin America country

A "strong company culture" has been usually deemed the sine qua non of success in organizations. As a consequence, the interplay between organizational culture and company's performance is a critical issue in organization studies needed of empirical research to surpass management conventional wisdom. Moving in that direction, this paper -based upon a in-depth study of a large mining MNC operating in rural Colombia- shows that organizational culture has played an important role in the company's sustainability for over three decades (1970-2003) in a particularly conflicting and turbulent environment. The case study was based on a qualitative methodology that included the realization of almost one hundred in-depth interviews with a variety of stakeholders, field observations, and a review of secondary sources on the company.