How are companies' organizational ethical cultures shaped by social embeddedness? This article merges social embeddedness and organizational culture literatures to craft a conceptual framework classifying organizations based on the origin (external or internal) and applicability (narrow or broad) of their values and basic assumptions. This introduces the concept of externally anchored organizational worldviews (ExAnOW) that embrace broad assertive claims of external origin. After establishing its empirical relevance for business ethics practice, the article delineates a research agenda for investigating ExAnOWs and the wider social embeddedness of organizational cultures.