Seems like a false correlation. Yes it was was Utah company founded by BYU students, but that is not the reason why/doesn't map cleanly to the culture. Culture comes in large part from founders and the first hires.
I understand that my comment sounded unnecessarily glib, and for that I apologize.
If you read the book, Peterson actually attributes the culture, especially early on (which as you said, is often set by the founders/first-hires, and while Peterson wasn't a co-founder, he was I think the first or second employee and related by marriage to a co-founder), to the fact that they were all conservative LDS types from Orem/Provo who graduated from BYU.
I certainly am not trying to say that ALL Utah businesses, all LDS businesses or all BYU grads in the 1980s or otherwise were like WordPerfect. That said, it would be silly to pretend that in this case, religion had no role in the culture (and Peterson outright said as much in his book, so this isn't even a debate point). To draw a parallel: I grew up in Atlanta, which is largely Protestant. Chick-fil-A is one of our staples , and as we all remember from the controversy a few years ago, a company VERY rooted in the whole Southern Baptist thing.
Put aside the whole same-sex marriage nastiness for a second (and trust me, as someone who loves Chick-fil-A, that pissed me the fuck off and made me very angry at the corporation), that company has a VERY distinct culture. Going beyond the whole closed on Sunday thing, people who worked there had to keep to a very specific set of standards while at work. To its credit, the company didn't enforce or try to push religious beliefs down employees throats (my boyfriend freshmen year who was a store manager was an atheist into industrial metal), but at work you couldn't wear certain kinds of clothing even underneath your work shirt. Guys couldn't wear hats backwards in the kitchen (seriously), shirts always have to be tucked in, there was a policy on language and what music could be played, even after hours (though as long as someone from corporate wasn't there, I think people get away with it), like, it's this whole thing. I tend to think some of that stuff gets kind of creepy, but to its credit, Chick-fil-A is probably the one fast food restaurant where the employees are competent and friendly 9/10. My point is that although I wouldn't brush all companies run by a Southern Baptist with the same brush, to ignore the role that that religion has had on Chick-fil-A's culture would be obtuse.
Similarly, to ignore the impact of a self-described conservative LDS hardliner from Orem/Provo had on the culture at WordPerfect is obtuse.
Certainly not all Utah or Mormon businesses have the same culture, but WordPerfect certainly seemed to ascribe to principals that are not at all at odds with what a hardline LDS guy born in the like 1950 would do.
A good counterexample would be Evans and Sutherland. David Evans was LDS, but fairly open; Sutherland would rib him about it in a joking way (e.g. see the LDS I [1]).
Of course, U of Utah is a bit more open than BYU :)
I don't understand. Your last sentence "Culture comes in large part from founders and first hires" seems to contradict the rest of your post, which seems to be arguing against the attribution of WordPerfect's culture to the specific culture background which unites its founders and first hires, but is distinct from the rest of the industry (or business more general) at the same time.
