The paper argues that organizational culture plays a central role in building and sustaining institutions. The process of institution building and sustenance is analyzed using institutional economics and collective action frameworks. The paper examines culture at IIMA, what it was, and is, how it was developed and the role it played in IIMA achieving excellence in some spheres of management education. It is argued that the declining commitment of the faculty to institutional tasks can be traced to erosion of culture more than anything else. The development and sustenance of culture is also shown to be heavily dependent on leadership style.