High-growth companies frequently demand extreme performance and long (unpaid) hours from employees due to the belief that an ever-rising share price makes everyone happy (assuming employees participate in the ESOP). But this situation is not eternal, and sooner or later the share price falls below the strike price and the implicit bargain (you give us your life and ruin your health in exchange for one day cashing out your shares & going off to live on Kauai) falls apart. At this point senior executives generally go into denial and assume the ever-upward trajectory of the company's share price will resume shortly. Eventually, denial is insufficient and at some point the true cost of churn becomes evident; these two factors then force a change of culture.

Unfortunately, fatuous "corporate values" never go away, but simply morph into whatever happens to be fashionable among the new crop of Harvard Business Review articles.