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I don't think it's "corporate culture" as much as "large org power games" as I've seen the very same thing happen in academia and administration at large schools.

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Absolutely. They'll talk about "culture" and how you need to have an office in order to have it, ignoring the fact that most larger companies have multiple offices—so, what, each office has its own culture or something?

More to the point, though: what do they mean by corporate culture, and why do they believe that people need to be in the same room in order to maintain it?

I'll bet anything there is no real definition of "corporate culture". If there is, it has nothing to do with where the employees are at any given moment. Yes, I'm saying that "corporate culture" is just a meaningless buzzword thrown around by people who hope you don't stop to wonder what it is they actually mean.

In my experience, each office does have its own culture to a surprising extent. Maintaining a common corporate culture across different offices is a very hard problem. Probably even harder than doing it in a pure remote company. (And I think corporate culture is as meaningful a term as anything-else culture: shared values and expectations, behavioral norms, jargon, inside jokes…)

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