How to preserve culture during rapid scaling

Reading time: ~30 min

Rapid growth is exciting. But what if your culture doesn't grow with you? Discover what scientific research reveals about the pitfalls of hypergrowth, and how to protect your organisational identity while scaling up or expanding internationally.

In this article

• Why culture comes under pressure during rapid growth
• What science says about culture dilution
• The five pitfalls of culture during scaling
• How to actually scale culture: five science-backed principles
• What brand culture has to do with it
• International expansion: carrying culture across borders
• How BR-ND People helps organisations with cultural scaling
• Checklist: is your culture ready for scaling?
• Frequently asked questions about organisational culture and scaling

Why culture comes under pressure during rapid growth

Picture this: your organisation doubles in size within a year. New offices, new markets, new teams. The energy is palpable. But somewhere, something starts to shift. Onboarding feels rushed. New colleagues don't know the founding story. Decisions that used to happen naturally now get stuck in layers and processes.

This isn't failure. It's a law of organisational physics. And no, a ping-pong table in the lobby won't fix it.

Research published in Technological Forecasting & Social Change (2024) describes this phenomenon as 'growing pains': internal challenges that arise when organisational development can't keep pace with growth speed. The researchers identify three structural drivers: time pressure, constant change and resource scarcity. Together, they ensure that culture, the invisible fabric that determines how people collaborate, is the first thing to tear.

Edgar Schein, the founding father of modern thinking about organisational culture, described culture as an iceberg. On the surface you see artefacts: the office design, the rituals, the way people greet each other. Beneath that lie the shared values and beliefs. And at the very bottom: the unconscious assumptions about how things are supposed to work. During rapid growth, those deeper layers are the first to be damaged, often without anyone noticing.

What science says about culture dilution

Let's be honest: 'safeguarding culture' sounds abstract. But the consequences of culture dilution are anything but. They're measurable, tangible and expensive. Very expensive.

Peer-reviewed research by Moedt, Lechner and Khapova (2024) in Technological Forecasting & Social Change (VU Amsterdam) concludes that organisational culture becomes 'diluted' during rapid growth through multiple converging factors: massive influx of new employees, loss of shared history and the inability to transfer implicit norms explicitly.

Chatman and O'Reilly (2016, Research in Organizational Behavior) — two of the most cited researchers in organisational culture, based at Berkeley Haas and Stanford GSB — developed the Organisational Culture Profile (OCP). Their research demonstrates that the degree of 'person-organisation fit', the alignment between personal values and organisational culture, is a direct predictor of commitment, satisfaction and turnover intention. During rapid growth, that fit declines, simply because there's less time to select for values and less room to internalise culture.

Schein's own work confirms this: when headcount grows explosively, informal culture transfer and 'learning by osmosis' become impossible. What remains are words on a wall. And let's be honest: nobody has ever been inspired by a poster that reads 'We are innovative' in the canteen. Unless you deliberately invest in translating culture into structure.

And then the numbers that hurt: meta-analyses of post-merger integrations (Marks & Mirvis, 2011; Cartwright & Cooper, 1992) estimate that more than half of all mergers and acquisitions fail to deliver the intended value, with cultural conflicts consistently identified as one of the primary causes. Not bad strategy. Clashing assumptions about how work is supposed to be done. The spreadsheets checked out. The people didn't.

An honest caveat: the relationship between culture and performance isn't a simple straight line. Research by Sørensen (2002, Administrative Science Quarterly) (MIT Sloan) shows that organisations with a very strong culture can actually be less adaptive in volatile environments. A culture held too rigidly can stifle innovation and adaptability. The goal, then, isn't to freeze culture, but to let it move deliberately, sturdy enough to provide direction, flexible enough to survive.

The five pitfalls of culture during scaling

Based on available research, we see five recurring patterns in organisations that lose their culture during growth. Sound familiar? That's allowed to hurt.

1. Speed over selection in hiring

The vacancy needed to be filled yesterday. The hiring manager has no time for a third interview. And so someone gets hired who 'looks good on paper'. Schein argued that culture can only form when a group builds a shared history. When dozens of new employees join every month, or hundreds during acquisitions, that shared foundation disappears faster than it can be built. The result: an office full of competent strangers who happen to share the same Slack workspace.

2. Evaporation of implicit knowledge

In small teams, values are transferred through daily interaction. Nobody needs to explain 'how we do things here'; you pick it up by having lunch together, listening in, failing together. As you grow, that mechanism disappears. What remains are formal documents that rarely capture the actual culture. A 40-page 'Culture Playbook' that everyone has downloaded and nobody has read. Sound familiar? Exactly.

3. Leadership that doesn't scale

In his analysis of startup failure, Tom Eisenmann (Harvard Business School, 2021) describes how founders accustomed to hands-on management hit a wall once the organisation grows beyond the point where personal oversight works. The founder who once knew every client by name now sits in steering committees about steering committees. The shift to a delegated leadership model isn't just an operational adjustment; it requires a fundamentally different leadership culture. Research on behavioural integrity (Simons, 2002, Organization Science, Cornell University) shows that the degree to which employees perceive their leader practices what they preach directly correlates with trust and results. During rapid growth, maintaining that consistency becomes increasingly difficult. How to handle that challenge is explored in our article on change communication that works. And that transition fails more often than it succeeds. Usually because the founder 'just quickly does it himself' instead of actually letting go.

4. Fragmentation through internationalisation

International expansion adds an extra layer: cultural diversity. What counts as 'direct feedback' in Amsterdam might be experienced as a diplomatic incident in Tokyo. And what feels like warm hospitality in São Paulo might come across as an invasion of personal space in Helsinki. The concept of 'glocalisation', introduced by sociologist Roland Robertson (1995), describes the balance successful global organisations find: keeping core values consistent while adapting their expression locally. Sounds simple. It isn't.

5. Systems replacing culture

During scaling, processes, protocols and systems are introduced to prevent chaos. Logical. But somewhere between the third approval form and the fifth compliance training, something shifts. Systems meant as scaffolding become a cage. Trust is replaced by control, autonomy by authorisation workflows. The bureaucracy grows, the soul shrinks. Congratulations: you've built a perfectly efficient organisation that nobody wants to work for.

And the cautionary tales?

Not every scale-up survives the culture test. WeWork invested billions in positioning itself as a 'community company' and even a 'state of consciousness.' The problem wasn't the positioning itself, but that the internal culture (characterised by excessive spending, questionable leadership and a toxic work environment) was diametrically opposed to the external story. When the S-1 filing in 2019 revealed the financial reality, the house of cards collapsed. WeWork is the ultimate proof that growth without cultural foundation isn't just ineffective; it's destructive. The brand grew. The culture didn't. And in the end, culture always wins.

Deliveroo doubled repeatedly across Europe, but internally struggled with a reputation of high pressure, little autonomy and a delivery culture that literally and figuratively knew no breaks. The growth was impressive; so was the turnover. The more offices that opened, the thinner the glue became that connected people to the original story. It's pitfall #1 in action: speed over selection, and systems over soul.

How to actually scale culture: five science-backed principles

The good news? Culture dilution isn't a law of nature. It's the result of unconscious choices. And conscious choices can prevent it. Here's what the science teaches us:

1. Make the implicit explicit

Schein's model teaches us that the most powerful layer of culture, the unconscious assumptions, is also the most vulnerable. During growth, you need to surface those assumptions. Not by writing a culture handbook that nobody reads (we know that drawer), but by collectively exploring: what do we actually believe about what good work looks like? About how we make decisions? About what we expect from leaders?

In practice, this means collectively discovering the 'story of the organisation.' Not a marketing story, but an honest narrative about who you are, what drives you and where you're heading. That story becomes the anchor against which you can test every growth decision.

2. Hire for values, not just skills

Chatman and O'Reilly's research is crystal clear: person-organisation fit is a stronger predictor of long-term success than technical competence alone. That doesn't mean looking for clones. It means designing selection processes that explicitly test whether someone's personal values align with your organisational culture.

In practice: develop a cultural fit framework that you consistently apply in every hire. Not as a vague gut-feel check, but as a structured part of the selection process. A strong employer brand makes that process not only easier, but also cheaper; our article on how employer branding cuts recruitment costs by up to 50% shows how.

An important nuance: sociologist Lauren Rivera (2012, American Sociological Review) (Northwestern Kellogg) warned that 'culture fit' in practice often becomes a cover for homogeneity and unconscious bias. Those who only look for people who 'fit in' inadvertently exclude perspectives the organisation needs most to grow. The solution isn't to abandon culture fit, but to complement it with 'culture add': deliberately seeking people who strengthen the culture with new perspectives, backgrounds and ways of thinking, without undermining the core. The first protects your culture. The second prevents it from becoming an echo chamber.

3. Invest in cultural infrastructure

Large organisations have physical infrastructure: offices, IT systems, supply chains. But culture needs infrastructure too. Think onboarding programs that don't start with 'here's your laptop and the wifi password,' but with 'this is who we are and why it matters.' Rituals that create connection. Leadership development that centres culture stewardship. A well-crafted brand culture playbook is the instrument that bridges the gap between an inspiring brand story and daily behaviour on the shop floor.

The 2019 HBR analysis emphasises that successful hypergrowth companies designate 'culture carriers': employees who are specifically tasked with transferring culture to new teams and locations. Not as a side job, but as a core responsibility.

4. Measure cultural health, not just financial health

You can't manage what you don't measure. And yet most organisations have no dashboard for cultural health. Chatman and colleagues offer the OCP as a scientifically validated instrument for measuring and monitoring culture. But you don't need to set up academic research. Frequent lightweight check-ins, short pulse surveys, team retros and one-to-ones give you the data to spot cultural shifts before they become problems.

Don't wait for the annual employee satisfaction survey. By the time those results are analysed, presented and discussed in a steering committee, your best people are working somewhere else. More on why those traditional measurement methods fall short and what alternatives work better in our article why NPS and employee satisfaction surveys no longer work.

5. Adapt the expression, not the essence

During international expansion, it's tempting to 'adapt the culture to the local market.' But research consistently shows that successful global organisations keep their core values universal and only localise the form of expression.

Concretely: your value of 'openness' might manifest in the Netherlands as direct feedback in a team meeting, and in Japan as an anonymous feedback system that achieves the same transparency in a culturally appropriate way. The value is the same. The form may differ.

What brand culture has to do with it

This is where it gets interesting. Because the dividing line between organisational culture and brand culture? It doesn't exist. What your people experience on a Monday morning is your brand. Not the tagline on your website. Not the employer branding video with the smiling colleagues by the coffee machine. The real story.

And that real story dilutes right along with it if you don't protect it. Not on your homepage; you can update that in an afternoon. But in every interaction that customers, partners and candidates have with your people. How that translation from values to concrete behaviour works is explored in our article on translating core values into concrete workplace behaviour.

We believe a strong brand grows from the inside out. A beautiful brand story that isn't carried by the people in your organisation is like a Michelin-starred restaurant with a microwave in the kitchen. It looks fantastic, until someone peeks behind the scenes. And in the age of Glassdoor and LinkedIn, everyone peeks behind the scenes.

That's why we always start with the people. Not with the marketing department. From the shop floor to the boardroom. Because the most powerful brand story is the one people recognise as their own. The deeper reasoning behind treating strategy, culture and brand as one system rather than three silos is laid out in Three silos, one system: why we refuse to fit in one box.

International expansion: carrying culture across borders

Scaling internationally is like moving with your family to another country. You take your values with you, but the way you live them changes. Different languages, different norms, different expectations. And you can't just pack your Dutch directness in a suitcase and expect it to land equally well everywhere.

Research by Joshua Conrad Jackson (University of Chicago Booth School of Business), published in the Harvard Business Review, shows that companies like Walmart failed in their international expansion not because of a bad product, but because of a cultural blind spot. They assumed that what worked in Arkansas would automatically work in Düsseldorf. Spoiler: it didn't. The lesson? You can export your business model, but you have to translate your culture. And translating is something very different from copying with Google Translate.

Successful international culture deployment requires three things:

Cultural intelligence at leadership level. Leaders managing international teams must look beyond their own cultural frame of reference. That requires training, awareness and the humility to recognise that 'how we do things' isn't universal. The manager who's a hero in Amsterdam for being 'straight to the point' can demotivate an entire team in Seoul with that exact same trait.

Local culture carriers. In every new market, you need people who understand both the local context and embody the organisation's core values. They form the bridge between the global brand story and the local reality. Without them, you're a tourist who thinks they know the city because they've read the Lonely Planet.

A shared story with room for variation. The organisational story must be clear enough to resonate universally, and flexible enough to come alive locally. That's not a compromise. That's strength. Think of jazz: the same melody, but every musician plays it differently.

How BR-ND People helps organisations with cultural scaling

We're not consultants who leave a report and disappear. We're more like the family doctor who also stops by when you're not sick, because prevention is more interesting than cure. Our process is rooted in science and co-creation, and it always starts with the people. Not with the PowerPoint.

Step 1: listen and gather

We start with in-depth interviews, roundtable discussions and surveys among employees at all levels. From the reception desk to the board of directors. We map the current culture: not how it reads on paper, but how it's actually experienced. Spoiler: those are almost never the same. And that gap is precisely where the value lies.

Step 2: analyse and interpret

Our social scientists and brand strategists dive into the gathered insights. Not to produce an 80-slide report that nobody reads, but to find the patterns that matter. Where is the energy? What are the shared beliefs? Where are cracks forming due to growth? This is where the spreadsheet meets the human, and the human wins.

Step 3: co-create and anchor

Together with a sounding board of employees, we develop the brand story, purpose and strategic direction. No top-down dictate from a boardroom with a view. No external agency telling you who you are. A joint exploration, with the kind of honest conversations most organisations avoid. And honest here isn't a euphemism for 'pleasant'. It's sometimes confronting. Always valuable.

Step 4: activate and embed

A story that ends up in a drawer is the most expensive document your organisation has ever produced. And trust us, we've seen enough of them to open a drawer museum. Activation means: translating the story into behaviour, rituals, leadership development and concrete actions. From onboarding to client contact, from procurement to innovation. Because a culture you don't live is a culture you don't have. And a drawer you never open might as well never have been filled.

Checklist: is your culture ready for scaling?

Be honest. Answer these questions:

• Can new employees explain what your organisation stands for after their first month, in their own words?
• Is your selection process designed to test for cultural fit and cultural enrichment?
• Do you have a mechanism for measuring cultural health, separate from financial performance?
• Are your core values recognised and experienced by employees across all teams and locations?
• Have you designated culture carriers responsible for transferring culture during growth?
• Do you dare to be transparent about where your culture is under pressure?

If you have to answer 'no' to more than two of these questions, it's time for a real conversation.

Last updated: April 2026

Frequently asked questions about organisational culture and scaling

What is culture dilution during rapid growth?

Culture dilution is the gradual weakening of an organisation's shared values, beliefs and behavioural norms caused by rapid growth in people, locations or markets. Scientific research shows this is one of the biggest risks during hypergrowth; not because growth is harmful, but because the mechanisms through which culture is transferred don't automatically scale. Think of it as a recipe that works perfectly for four people, but becomes unrecognisable when you scale it to four hundred. The ingredients are still there. The flavour isn't.

Why is organisational culture important when scaling?

Organisational culture is the strongest predictor of employee satisfaction, engagement and turnover intention in growing organisations. Research by Chatman and O'Reilly shows that strong person-organisation fit, the alignment between personal values and organisational culture, leads to higher engagement and lower turnover. When scaling, that fit comes under structural pressure. In short: people don't leave companies. They leave cultures that no longer feel like theirs.

How do you preserve company culture during international expansion?

International culture management is the practice of keeping your core values universal while adapting their expression locally. Invest in local culture carriers, train leaders in cultural intelligence and develop an organisational story that's clear enough to resonate globally, and flexible enough to come alive locally.

What's the difference between 'culture fit' and 'culture add'?

Culture fit is the degree to which someone's personal values align with the organisational culture. Culture add is the deliberate search for people who strengthen the culture with new perspectives, without undermining its core. The first protects your culture; the second prevents it from becoming an echo chamber. And yes, you need both. A team of clones isn't a culture. It's a hall of mirrors.

How do you measure organisational culture?

Measuring organisational culture can be done with the Organisational Culture Profile (OCP) by Chatman and O'Reilly, a scientifically validated instrument that maps culture characteristics and person-organisation fit. In practice, you can also work with frequent pulse surveys, team retros and structured one-to-ones. The point is: measure it. Regularly. Because by the time the annual employee satisfaction survey has been analysed, presented and discussed in a steering committee, your best people are working somewhere else.

When should you adapt your culture during growth?

The Friday afternoon drinks that once brought the whole team together no longer work when you're spread across three time zones. That doesn't mean connection has become less important; it means the form no longer fits. Culture evolution is the deliberate co-development of systems, processes and forms of expression while the core, your fundamental values and beliefs, remains stable. Adapt the form when existing structures no longer support culture transfer. But never touch what drives your organisation at its core. Think of a tree: the roots stay, the branches grow with the seasons.

What are the first signs that your culture is diluting?

The earliest signals are subtle but recognisable. New employees who after three months still can't explain what the organisation stands for. Decisions increasingly made based on processes rather than principles. Rising turnover among your most engaged people: not the lowest performers, but the most valuable ones. And the most treacherous signal: the disappearance of informal rituals that nobody formally established, but that were the glue holding everything together.

How do you prevent processes and systems from suffocating culture?

By designing systems that facilitate autonomy rather than control. Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory (2000) shows that people become intrinsically motivated when they experience autonomy, competence and relatedness. Every process you introduce during scaling should be tested against these three needs. For every new form, every approval layer, ask: does this strengthen trust, or does it replace trust with control? If the answer is the latter, reconsider the design.

What role does onboarding play in preserving culture during growth?

Onboarding is the most powerful cultural transmission moment you have. Peer-reviewed research by Bauer and Erdogan (2011) in the APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology shows that structured organisational socialisation correlates directly with retention, performance and cultural internalisation of new employees. During rapid growth, the temptation is to reduce onboarding to 'laptop, badge, and here's the coffee.' But the first 90 days largely determine whether someone internalises the culture or merely stands beside it. Invest in onboarding that doesn't start with procedures, but with the story.

What's the difference between safeguarding culture and freezing culture?

The difference lies in the core-periphery distinction. Safeguarding culture means protecting the fundamental values and beliefs while letting the forms of expression evolve. Freezing culture means clinging to the way things have always been done, including rituals, processes and habits that once fit but no longer work. Sørensen (2002) warned that organisations with an overly rigid culture are less adaptive. The art is knowing which parts are roots and which are branches.

How do you measure whether your culture is still healthy after doubling in size?

Measure on three levels. First: do people know your story? Ask ten random employees to describe in one sentence what the organisation stands for. If you get ten different answers, you have a problem. Second: do people feel safe? Measure psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999, Administrative Science Quarterly) via short pulse surveys. Third: are the right people leaving or the wrong ones? Analyse turnover data not just by volume, but by profile. If your culture carriers are leaving, that's an alarm signal no satisfaction score can mask.

Growth isn't an excuse, it's an invitation

Rapid growth doesn't have to come at the cost of who you are. On the contrary: it's precisely the moment to consciously choose who you want to be. At greater scale. With more people. In more markets.

The organisations that do this best aren't the ones that freeze their culture. They're the ones that consciously let their culture co-evolve. Who see the conversation about values not as a luxury for quiet times, but as a strategic necessity for moments of growth.

The difference between an organisation that grows and one that flourishes? You don't make that difference with systems and processes alone. You make it with people who know what they stand for, and a story they can tell with conviction: in Amsterdam, in Tokyo, in São Paulo.

Client stories

Theory is nice. Practice is better. These organisations scaled their culture alongside their growth:

• Thorizon: a new future for clean energy - Building a new organisation around groundbreaking nuclear technology, we co-created a brand identity that anchors the pioneering spirit and shared purpose of the team; essential for a young organisation in hypergrowth.
• Van Vulpen: the heartbeat beneath our feet - In the technical world of cables and infrastructure, we helped Van Vulpen preserve their strong family culture during rapid growth. By defining the purpose around 'connection', a shared compass emerged that works from construction site to boardroom.
• Nextview: a Brand Culture Manual for international growth - Nextview scaled from 60 to several hundred employees across multiple European countries in 3-4 years. We developed a 100-page Brand Culture Manual that became the foundation for onboarding, leadership development and international culture transfer; ensuring every new colleague, whether starting in Amsterdam or Asia, receives the same cultural immersion.

Written by: Alexander Koene & Kim Cramer PhD

Scientific sources

Fourteen rigorous, peer-reviewed sources form the scientific bedrock of this whitepaper on culture and scaling. Universities and journals on the line-up: MIT Sloan, Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, Berkeley Haas, University of Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, Cornell, University of Rochester, VU Amsterdam, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lancaster University, and peer-reviewed publications in Administrative Science Quarterly, Research in Organizational Behavior, Journal of Applied Psychology, American Sociological Review, Organization Science, Journal of Business and Psychology, Psychological Inquiry and Technological Forecasting & Social Change.

• Bauer, T.N. & Erdogan, B. (2011). Organizational socialization: The effective onboarding of new employees. In APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 3. American Psychological Association.
• Cartwright, S. & Cooper, C.L. (1992). Mergers and Acquisitions: The Human Factor. Butterworth-Heinemann. Lancaster University Management School.
• Chatman, J.A. & O'Reilly, C.A. (2016). Paradigm lost: Reinvigorating the study of organizational culture. Research in Organizational Behavior, 36, 199-224. Berkeley Haas & Stanford GSB.
• Deci, E.L. & Ryan, R.M. (2000). The 'what' and 'why' of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268. University of Rochester.
• Edmondson, A.C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. Harvard Business School.
• Eisenmann, T. (2021). Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success. Currency/Random House. Harvard Business School.
• Harter, J.K., Schmidt, F.L. & Hayes, T.L. (2002). Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(2), 268-279. University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
• Jackson, J.C. (2024). A Model for Expanding Your Business into Foreign Markets. Harvard Business Review. University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
• Marks, M.L. & Mirvis, P.H. (2011). Merge ahead: A research agenda to increase merger and acquisition success. Journal of Business and Psychology, 26(2), 161-168.
• Moedt, K., Lechner, C. & Khapova, S. (2024). Growing pains during scale-up hypergrowth: Integration and future research agenda. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 209. VU Amsterdam.
• Rivera, L.A. (2012). Hiring as cultural matching: The case of elite professional service firms. American Sociological Review, 77(6), 999-1022. Northwestern Kellogg.
• Schein, E.H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th edition). Jossey-Bass. MIT Sloan School of Management.
• Simons, T.L. (2002). Behavioral integrity: The perceived alignment between managers' words and deeds as a research focus. Organization Science, 13(1), 18-35. Cornell University.
• Sørensen, J.B. (2002). The strength of corporate culture and the reliability of firm performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(1), 70-91. MIT Sloan School of Management.