After fitting a topic model to 40,927 COVID-19–related paragraphs in 3,581 earnings calls over the period Jan. 22–Apr. 30, 2020, we obtain firm-level measures of exposure and response related to COVID-19 for 2,894 U.S. firms. We show that despite the large negative impact of COVID-19 on their operations, firms with a strong corporate culture outperform their peers without a strong culture. Moreover, these firms are more likely to support their community, embrace digital transformation, and develop new products than those peers. We conclude that corporate culture is an intangible asset designed to meet unforeseen contingencies as they arise.

We conduct the first large-scale study of how different stakeholder groups assess corporate culture and quantify the economic implications of those differences. We employ generative AI to analyze analyst reports, call transcripts, and employee reviews, and organize the extracted information into a knowledge graph that links a culture type to its perceived causes and effects. We demonstrate that the divergence in different stakeholder groups' assessment of culture aligns with their distinct roles and economic incentives. Moreover, we show that analysts' culture analyses are incorporated into stock recommendations and target prices, and investors react to divergence in stakeholders' assessment of culture.