About the Author
David Stauffer is a business writer who heads the corporate writing firm Stauffer Bury, Inc. He has written
articles on business and management which have appeared in Harvard Management Update, Across the
Board, The Wall Street Journal and other business magazines and periodicals. He teaches business writing
as an adjunct professor at Rocky Mountain College.
About the Article
The Article “Cultural Fit: Why Hiring Good People Is No Longer Good Enough”, has appeared in the Harvard
Business Review in the March 1998 issue. And argues that most HR recruiters are insisting on Cultural Fit
and that Companies like Microsoft and Walt Disney have flourished because of recruiting only the persons
who fit into the culture. The Summary of the Article has been already but up on the preceding pages.
However, while in 1998 hiring people who were culturally fit may have been the in thing but there has
been flip side of the coin too. There are two arguments against culture fit, one, culture of a company is
itself poorly defined and two there are biases which creep up when evaluating people for culture fit.
History
Before reviewing the article, it would be relevant to look at the history of the term “culture fit”. The
history of cultural Fit goes back as far as the 1980s. Lauren Rivera who has written extensively on Cultural
Fit both as an advocate and a critic of Cultural Fit
1
in an article in American Social review in 2012 has
