From a paper by Gary Gorton and others.

A sensible list of elements in that package, though neither nearly exhaustive nor likely satisfactory to all, is as follows, adapted from a variety of such lists in the literature:
• unwritten codes, implicit rules, and regularities in interactions;
• identities, self-image, and guiding purpose;
• espoused values and evolving norms of behavior;
• conventions, customs, and traditions;
• symbols, signs, rituals, and group celebrations;
• knowledge, discourse, emergent understanding, doctrine, ideology;
• memes, jokes, style, and shared meaning;
• shared mental models, expectations, and linguistic paradigms.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

The paper goes down hill from there, ending up with a mathematical model. I think that the best way to approach the issue of corporate culture is to ask what problems various practices are supposed to solve. I think that in general there are three types of problems, all of which plague the process of central planning in general:

1. Coordination/resource allocation. Without a price system, how do you allocate resources efficiently? For example, the corporate organization chart is supposed to help with coordination. Also supposed to address the coordination problem is that bane of every white-collar worker, the business meeting.

2. Incentives/principal-agent problems. How do you implement systems that are not gamed to the advantage of individuals within the firm but to the disadvantage of the owners of the firm?

There are many problems of this type. And there are various errors that could be made in either direction, e.g. giving middle managers too much incentive to take risks or too much incentive to be risk-averse.

3. Playing the game of evolution: stick with the status quo; copy another player; or innovate. Each alternative has its pros and cons, depending on market conditions and internal capabilities. If your business plays the game well, you coalesce around making the right moves. If you don’t, you make too many mistakes and you lose.

Hiring practices are important here. If you always promote from within, that will bias you toward playing “status quo.” If you hire a lot of senior management from other firms, that will bias you toward “copy.” If you hire junior people and advance them quickly, that will help you play “innovate.”