HR Organizational Culture Discussion
HR Organizational Culture Discussion
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Activity #1Based on the reading from Cameron and Quinn, discuss the difference between culture and climate.
Activity #2 – Value Clusters Search the Web and compare at least five companies’ slogans. Briefly state what value cluster is represented in the advertising. For example:
Kentucky Fried Chicken – We do chicken right! Value Cluster – Efficiency
CommentaryIdeology and Organizational CultureAs discussed in module 1, organizations’ cultures emerge from attempts to manage uncertainties/ambiguities, create some degree of order, and form a good impression while doing all of this.People in organizations develop cultures as they interact and share ways of managing and coping with uncertainties. Cultures have two components:• Substance—which consists of shared systems of beliefs, values, and norms• Forms—which are observable ways that members of a culture express their ideasThe substance of an organization’s culture is its ideologies. Ideologies are shared, inter-related sets of beliefs about how things work; values that indicate what’s worth having or doing; and norms that tell people how they should behave.When beliefs, values, and norms develop over time into the relatively stable, unified, and coherent clusters that comprise ideologies, they provide casual models for explaining and legitimating collective and individual behaviors. Ideologies explain and justify existing social and organizational systems in ways that make them seem natural, logically compelling, and morally acceptable.The Protestant Ethic is a classic example of a particular ideology’s influence on organizational culture. The major characteristics of the Protestant Ethic are:• accumulation of tangible goods (money, wealth) as evidence of God’s favor through unremitting hard work in a secular calling• wealth not accrued for lavish spending on one’s self, but rather for the further accumulation of more wealthDo you agree with those who say that the Protestant Ethic has laid the foundations of modern capitalism in corporate America? This belief system carries with it associated values favoring individualism and individual success and norms prescribing hard work and achievement as acceptable routes to success. Such a belief system seems to be so strong in our corporate life that not to believe so carries serious consequences and sanctions. It certainly gives meaning to many of corporate America’s economic behaviors. Companies go to great lengths to manage impressions of wealth, success, and growth, which is the embodiment of the Protestant Ethic.How Value Clusters Affect American Corporate CultureCertain value clusters reflect major ideological themes of American corporate culture. These clusters are arranged in dominant and subordinate (subculture) importance according to their pervasiveness, duration, the intensity with which they are pursued and maintained, and the prestige of those who express and behave according to them. They are:Competitive Achievement, Work, Efficiency, and RationalityThis first cluster emphasizes the importance of personal achievement within the context of strenuous work and unremitting competition. However, this ideology does not encompass the complete range of one’s personal achievements; only those that are practical, tangible accomplishments. Would you not agree that American culture has historically given action/work a central place in its ethics and values?The values of efficiency and practicality (rationality) are closely allied. Getting things done is an American motto. Having one’s actions regarded as impractical is a stigma. In general, Americans value rational and immediate action over intellectual and aesthetic concerns, especially in the workplace.IndividualismThis cluster emphasizes the supreme importance of self. American culture places extraordinary importance on the individual personality/self, one’s individual rights, freedom of the individual from excessive social or organizational controls, and on the basic presumption of equality among individuals.Progress and MaterialismThe third cluster of American dominant values centers around the inevitability of progress in the human condition such as the tangible expression of the value placed on high levels of material comfort. The pursuit of happiness, leisure, personal fulfillment, and ownership of “things” drives American society from Wall Street and Rodeo Drive to Main Street U.S.A. To strive for promotions and raises at work in pursuit of personal comfort and gain are believed to keep the wheels of progress turning.HumanitarianismThis fourth cluster is seen as being in conflict with the first. Humanitarianism expresses strong moral concerns and favors helping others rather than letting them fend for themselves. Employee Assistance Programs are examples of humanitarianism in the workplace.EthnocentrismThe fifth and final cluster concerns the ethnocentric flavor of American culture. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge other cultures by using one’s own culture as a standard. In that regard, all cultures are ethnocentric to some degree. However, many believe that American culture tends to be particularly ethnocentric. Would you agree that America has its own unique brand of ethnocentrism?Manifestations of Values/Ideologies in U.S. Corporate CultureValues provide the ideological context within which U.S. organizations operate. The following elements are manifestations of the aforementioned value clusters:• rationality and science• egalitarianism• performance-oriented management• Social Darwinism• industrial betterment• scientific management• human relations• quality of work life• Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs)Cultural FormsForms are observable ways in which culture is expressed. Chapter 2 in your textbook established that ideologies are the emotional sets of beliefs, values, and norms that the substance of organization’s cultures. Chapter 3 defines cultural forms as those concrete manifestations of culture. They are observable entities through which members of a culture express, affirm, and communicate their cultural substance. Your textbook lists them as:• symbols—concrete indications of abstract values, such as logos and flags• language—jargon, slang, gestures, signals, songs, humor, jokes, slogans• narratives—stories, legends, myths, sagas• practices—rituals, taboos, rites, ceremoniesActivities in organizations inevitably involve some cultural forms. For example, college fraternities and sororities have their own familiar language, jargon, symbols, and practices that help to provide meaning for students in an otherwise uncertain and ambiguous environment. Cultural forms aid understanding through the meanings they convey.SubculturesAlthough organizations have distinctive cultures, it would be a mistake to think that any particular organization has only a single homogeneous culture. Most organizations have multiple cultures. Most modern U.S. organizations can be termed multicultural.It is customary to call the cultures within an encompassing culture, subcultures. Organizational subcultures consist of distinctive clusters of ideologies, cultural forms, and other practices that certain groups of people in an organization exhibit. They differ noticeably from the overall organizational culture in which they are embedded, either intensifying its understandings and practices or diverging from them. Subcultures also differ noticeably from each other, e.g., unions versus management. There are definitely different expectations and perceptions.Factors encouraging the development of subcultures include differential interactions, shared experiences, similar personal characteristics, and social cohesion. Occupations provide the basis for the most highly organized, distinctive, and pervasive subcultures in work organizations’ cultures.Departments within work organizations are natural generators of subcultures.Belonging to a distinct occupation structures people’s lives in many ways. In some instances, members’ lives become so permeated with occupational relationships and ideologies that their nonwork lives are strongly influenced by their occupational identities. Occupational subcultures also can have their own symbols, jargon, slogans, songs, myths, rites of passage, and the like.Strong identification with occupational ideologies and demand of time that they require are fertile ground for potential conflict between management and occupational communities, i.e., labor unions, and professional associations. It becomes a matter of control. Who is in control?Potentially, all subcultures may present a challenge to the organization’s top management to achieve a unified effort by the entire organization. In such cases, strong organization-wide cultures (cultures containing many values and tightly integrated cultural levels) can provide at least some integrative efforts. Managing with subcultures is a tremendous managerial challenge, and achieving the integration of subcultures is one of the greatest challenges of organizational culture management.Return to top of page
Chapter 10a 331Chapter 10a | Organizational Climate andCulture: Strategic Determiners, Part I—Shaping Organizational Climate and CultureReferring to the Strategic Leadership Model (figure 2-1), “Shape Climate and Culture”is the next sector of strategic leader work. Each of the interviewed senior leadersexpressed the importance of having a keen understanding of the organization’s climateand culture and the knowledge needed as to how to shape and use them to enhanceorganizational performance and long-term vitality and viability. Clearly, as strategicleaders formulate their visions and strategies, they must take into account the organization’sculture—will it impede or facilitate the organizational and behavioral changes,performance, and outcomes needed to achieve sustained superior performance withina volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) environment?Organizational climate is often viewed as the personality of the organization. It isthe feelings, tones, moods, attitudes, etc., whereas the culture represents the collectivebeliefs of the members, e.g., the assumptions, values, traditions, artifacts, and ethicalunderstandings/practices of a group/subculture or the organization as a whole. Strategicleaders can have a major impact on long-term organizational climate and cultureby what they emphasize, measure, and control. In general, strategic leaders can affectorganizational climate by their leadership behavior and policies, whereas changing orinfluencing organizational culture takes significantly more time and effort.Organizational culture is a powerful force and is critical for the organization’sshort- and long-term viability and success. Strategic leaders must recognize and have anappreciation for the climate and culture in which their organizations operate. They mustalso know how to recognize when culture needs to change, how it needs to be changed,and the best way to implement that change. This chapter will consider what scholarsand prominent strategic leaders have to say about climate and culture and how some ofthese leaders used, led, changed, and managed organizational climate and culture. Part Iexamines the strategic leader’s role and responsibility for shaping organizational climateand culture. Part II examines the importance of building and nurturing two specificorganizational climates and cultures, one ethical and the other innovative.Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, authors of Diagnosing and Changing OrganizationalCulture, explained that culture reflects “the prevailing ideology that people carryinside their heads. It conveys a sense of identity to employees, provides unwritten andoften unspoken guidelines for how to get along in the organization, and it enhancesthe stability of the social system that they experience. . . . [Often,] people are unaware 332 Leading at the Strategic Levelof their culture until it is challenged, until they experience a new culture, or until it ismade overt and explicit through, for example, a framework or model.”1Eighty percent of executives surveyed agreed, “Culture is as important as strategyfor business success.”2 Cameron and Quinn estimated that almost 70 percent of majororganizational change efforts fail.3 One of the main reasons is the organizational culture.Strategic leaders must have an understanding of and appreciation for the culturesinfluencing their organizations. They must also shape the culture of the organizationas conditions warrant. When a strategic leader fails to recognize the need for culturalchange, most likely other types of initiated organizational changes will fail.4Leadership scholar Owen Jacob stated, “Strategic decision makers must have a profoundunderstanding of culture—both organizational and societal—for two reasons.First . . . they . . . need to operate effectively across cultural boundaries. Second, theymay need to effect cultural change in order to change either organizational or societalbehavior in a direction mandated by strategic vision.”5 According to John McGuire,author of Transforming Your Leadership Culture, “If a strategy or directive doesn’t meshwith the beliefs about ‘how things are done around here,’ then the culture will simplyreject it.”6 As former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner states, the “most important rules arethe ones that aren’t written down anywhere.”7What is culture? How does it relate to organizational climate? Are they different?Consider the following two examples:Julie Roehm—10 Months at Wal-MartAfter Julie Roehm spent nearly 5 years at Chrysler, headhunter Spencer Stuartapproached her in September 2005 to head Wal-Mart’s marketing communicationsdepartment. At the time, Wal-Mart was struggling and Roehm saw an exciting opportunityto transform the company and its image. “Wal-Mart was promising to continuepaying the mortgage on her Detroit home until she sold it, and Roehm’s compensationwasn’t half bad: a base salary of $325,000, a signing bonus of $250,000, plus restrictedstock of about $300,000, stock options valued at approximately $500,000, and anannual performance bonus of up to $400,000.” Upon arrival at Wal-Mart in February2006, “Roehm recognized that fitting in would be harder than she had imagined.” Thewindowless offices and gray walls certainly were not inspiring and she immediatelypainted her office chartreuse with chocolate-brown trim.For much of the summer, Roehm jetted around the country visiting the 30 or soadvertising agencies that were bidding to win the $580 million Wal-Mart account. Asa result, she missed many of the Friday morning all-purpose meetings Wal-Mart’sCEO Lee Scott held with the 300 executives and managers. Looking back, Roehmrealizes she could have played her politics more astutely. “Had I known,” Roehmsays, “I never would have been gone on Friday.” Moreover, although Roehm began Chapter 10a 333pushing for merchandise to gain upscale customers and to unclutter store interiors,the merchandisers were pushing for more in-store signage to show Wal-Mart was stillall about low prices. As Wal-Mart’s same-store sales continued to slide, by the endof summer the merchants convinced Wal-Mart executives to refocus on low prices.Therefore, once again, price was the dominant advertising theme.Only 10 months after Wal-Mart recruited Roehm to help modernize their tired brand,they fired her. Roehm offers some advice regarding taking a job to help a company ororganization reinvent itself. “In Wal-Mart’s case, she says, the concept of ‘Everyday LowPrices’ was so deeply embedded that the retailer’s ambition of getting upscale shoppersto buy more was a nonstarter. Roehm acknowledges mistakes, among them moving tooquickly and not adapting to her new workplace. But she also paints a picture of warringfiefdoms and a passive-aggressive culture that was hostile to outsiders. Wal-Mart, shesays ‘would rather have had a painkiller [than] taken the vitamin of change.’ What hasshe learned? ‘The importance of culture. It can’t be underestimated.’”8Louis Gerstner—The Turn-Around of IBMIn 1993, IBM’s Board of Directors asked Louis Gerstner to serve as Chairman and CEOand bring the company back from the brink of extinction. During the periods of his CEOleadership (1993–2002), he led one of the most remarkable turnarounds in corporatehistory, making IBM a dynamic, customer-focused, and value-driven company. Whilethere were many major strategies, decisions, and actions taken to transform IBM, Gerstnerpointed out in Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance that:I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collectivecapacity of its people to create value. Vision, strategy, marketing, financialmanagement—any management systems, in fact—can set you on the right pathand carry you for a while. But no enterprise—whether in business, government,education, health care, or any area of human endeavor—will succeed over thelong haul if those elements aren’t part of its DNA.9When Gerstner began as CEO in 1993, IBM reported the largest loss in the historyof corporate America, $8.1 billion after taxes; and 150,000 IBM members had left thecompany. He noted that the media and the Wall Street analysts were already writingIBM’s obituary, and many advised the company to begin selling off its businesses andassets. Gerstner diagnosed the IBM workforce as demoralized, paralyzed, suspicious,and hostile. Yet IBM had great talent, storerooms of vision, strategies, and a great sourceof technical innovation. Gerstner determined that the root of IBM’s decline was whathe called the “success syndrome.” In the previous decades, IBM was extraordinarilysuccessful. Yet by the 1990s, it had become inward looking, insular, and locked into
Thomas Jefferson UniversityJefferson Digital CommonsSchool of Nursing Faculty Papers & Presentations Jefferson College of Nursing2-10-2011Defining and Assessing Organizational CultureJennifer Bellot PhD, RN, MHSAThomas Jefferson University, bellot.jennifer@gmail.comLet us know how access to this document benefits youFollow this and additional works at: http://jdc.jefferson.edu/nursfpPart of the Nursing CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Jefferson Digital Commons. The Jefferson Digital Commons is a service of ThomasJefferson University’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). The Commons is a showcase for Jefferson books and journals, peer-reviewed scholarlypublications, unique historical collections from the University archives, and teaching tools. The Jefferson Digital Commons allows researchers andinterested readers anywhere in the world to learn about and keep up to date with Jefferson scholarship. This article has been accepted for inclusion inSchool of Nursing Faculty Papers & Presentations by an authorized administrator of the Jefferson Digital Commons. For more information, pleasecontact: JeffersonDigitalCommons@jefferson.edu.Recommended CitationBellot PhD, RN, MHSA, Jennifer, “Defining and Assessing Organizational Culture” (2011). School ofNursing Faculty Papers & Presentations. Paper 34.http://jdc.jefferson.edu/nursfp/34 Organizational Culture 1As submitted to:Nursing ForumAnd later published as:Defining and Assessing Organizational CultureVolume 46, Issue 1, pages 29–37, January-March 2011DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-6198.2010.00207.xThe target of much debate, organizational culture has occupied a prominentposition in multidisciplinary publications since the early 1980s. Fraught withinconsistencies, the early research and literature addressing organizational culture wasoften conflicting and recursive. As one researcher stated, culture is “one of the two orthree most complicated words in the English language” (Williams, 1983). Years ofconceptualization, comparison and assessment have led to an emerging consensus on theappropriate definition and role for organizational culture. This manuscript documents thehistorical development of organizational culture as a construct and its ensuingassessment, comparing and contrasting prominent theories and methods of understandingorganizational culture. Subsequently, a brief review of the health care literatureillustrates the applicability of organizational culture to the health care setting.Development Organizational Culture 2Most researchers agree that the notion of studying work environments firstemerged with the work of a social psychologist, Kurt Lewin. Lewin, Lippitt and White(1939) first coined the term organizational climate in the study “Patterns of AggressiveBehavior in Experimentally Created ‘Social Climates.’” This term was usedinconsistently for the next two decades until the 1960s. By this point, research onorganizational climate research was flourishing.Climate research represented a convergence of psychological and sociologicalepistemologies. During the 1960s and 1970s, climate research generally addressedprofessional socialization and the orientation or integration of the new employee. Theterms climate and culture were often used interchangeably or within quotation marks, andwere not well defined conceptually (Reichers & Schneider, 1990). In the mid-1970s theemergence of symbolic framing introduced anthropologic epistemology to the study oforganizational climate. Among climate researchers, the sense that the climate constructwas not capturing the holism of the work environment led to the development oforganizational culture. Hence, this represented the beginning of defining culture,acknowledging its intangibility and integrating psychologic, sociologic and anthropologicmethods and philosophies (Ashkanasy, Wilderom, & Peterson, 2000).Pettigrew (1979) was the first to introduce formally the term organizationalculture, incorporating a distinct anthropologic base. Shortly thereafter, an explosion ofliterature was produced regarding organizational culture and its ideal management. Textsby Deal and Kennedy (1988), Ouchi (1981) and Peters and Waterman (1982), inparticular, were responsible for the widespread popularity of this concept. These works,however, were prescriptive, solutions-based, largely atheoretical and non-academic. This Organizational Culture 3early writing was marketed to managers within a typical corporate structure and wasdesigned to provide a quick fix and competitive edge.Meanwhile, academia struggled to keep up with the commercial sector. Thecentral issue behind an academic rise of interest in organizational culture was that “a hard‘scientific’ management of institutions could and should be augmented with, or evendisplaced by, an approach that stressed a softer, more humane understanding of humanvalues and culture” (Parker, 2000, p. 1). The organizational culture perspective was the“counter culture” of organizational theory, as it challenged much of the contemporaryorganizational behavior theory (Shafritz & Ott, 1987). Until this point, organizationstudies were dominated by a positivist paradigm. The introduction of anthropologicalepistemology propagated the notion that the organizational environment (specifically,culture) should be studied using qualitative methods.During the 1980s, the conceptual base for organizational culture was developedfurther. As previously mentioned, there was much disagreement among scholars anddisciplines regarding appropriate definition and assessment. The next sections provide areview of the prevailing themes and controversies surrounding the definition oforganizational culture.Prevailing ThemesDrawing from the traditions of three different disciplines, the definition oforganizational culture is complicated by disagreements regarding what it should andshould not include and the best to assessment method. Although many theorists in the1980s advanced the conceptual understanding of organizational culture, a select grouphas dominated the majority of culture research (Table 1). Further, it is widely accepted Organizational Culture 4that there is no singular, correct definition of culture. Van Maanen (1985) states, “Theterm ‘culture’ is powerfully evocative, but it does not come from anthropology as anintact structural package ready to serve as a paradigmatic foundation on which to buildthe analysis of organizations” (p. 57).Through the continued work and conceptual development from such scholars asEdgar Schein, Mats Alvesson and Benjamin Schneider, some consistency of thought hasarisen. This loose consensus of principles has guided much inquiry about organizationalculture (Siehl & Martin, 1983; Druckman, Singer, & Van Cott, 1997).
1. Organizational culture exists. Although it may seem simplistic, it took years of inquiry and theory to conclude thatorganizational culture exists. This debate is intimately related to the next tenet of culture.2. Cultures are inherently fuzzy in that they incorporate contradictions, paradoxes,ambiguities and confusion. Throughout the development of organizational culture, it has been recognized thatculture is not a “surface” phenomena. Rather, it is “infused with symbols andsymbolism” (Druckman, Singer, & Van Cott, 1997, p. 69) and is “undetectable most ofthe time” (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). The lack of tangibility and potential for confusionand inconsistency lend to complex assessment of the concept. This thought paradigm ismore involved than the positivist tradition of business research, thus necessitating greaterconceptual development.3. Organizational culture is socially constructed, the product of groups, not individuals,and based on shared experiences. Organizational Culture 5 A core tenet regarding organizational culture is the group nature of the concept.Theorists have used this property to distinguish organizational culture from other, similarconstructs, and to differentiate methods from previous work in organizational climate.Culture provides an organization’s members with a framework for understanding andmaking sense of their work environment andexperiences (Siehl & Martin, 1983).4. Each organization’s culture is relatively unique, malleable and subject to continualchange. Central to this tenet was the debate over whether culture is something an organizationhas or something that an organization is. Originally, anthropological scholars reliedon their disciplinary traditions and asserted that organizations were cultures inthemselves (Rousseau, 1990). Further research, however, has led to relativeconsensus that culture is a property that the organization possesses. Further, sinceculture is a possession, there is the sense that it can be controlled, or at the very leastinfluenced and changed, by its members. Culture, therefore, is developed over timeand is not a static property. The assertion that culture is unique has led to some debateover how it is assessed. Generally, academic researchers believe that eachorganization’s culture is distinct, although some instruments have demonstrated theability to group separate cultures into broad categories. The notion that culture wasmalleable was an attractive attribute to corporate managers. Those that subscribedto this theory believed that molding organizational culture to an ideal form would therebyimprove organizational output. Organizational Culture 6Several accepted definitions of organizational culture are used in the literature, areflection of the epistemologic backgrounds or interests of the researcher. Most recentresearch on culture either cites Schein’s (1987) definition or uses a derivation of hiswork. Schein’s roots as a sociologist and his interests in the integration of newemployees are apparent in his definition: Organizational culture is the pattern of basic assumptions which a given group has invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, which have worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems…it is the assumptions which lie behind values and which determine the behavior patterns and the visible artifacts such as architecture, office layout, dress codes, and so on (1987, p. 383).ControversiesDespite the growing consensus among researchers interested in organizationalculture, there is also considerable disagreement. This does not necessarily mean thatorganizational culture is a weak or ill-defined concept. Rather, this divergence isindicative of a continually developing body of research (Ashkanasy, Wilderom, &Peterson, 2000). Several controversies surrounded the definition and operationalizationof organizational culture. Therefore, this paper will limit discussion to the three mostfrequently cited.Singular versus pluralIs there one, single culture per organization or are there several different culturesfound within an organization? Early researchers of organizational culture, particularly Organizational Culture 7those from the anthropologic perspective, posited that in order to be defined as a uniqueculture, each organization possessed a singular, universal culture. More recent research,however, has revealed the presence of subcultures, also known as “nested” cultures(Parker, 2000). This is an important quality to consider when conceptualizing culturemanagement or change. Additionally, recent cultural research has addressed the dualityof perceived versus actual culture. More research is warranted to determine theimplications of perceived and actual culture within an organization.Consensus versus dissensusIn the same vein as the preceding controversy, a body of research onorganizational culture has focused on the consistency of culture throughout anorganization. This often places administrative perceptions in opposition to the livedexperience of an organization’s employees. Meyerson’s (1991) research has focused onthe framing of culture within three paradigms: Integration, ambiguity and fragmentation.Meyerson asserts that it is appropriate, when characterizing an organization’sculture, to classify it within the bounds of its actual implementation. Based on herqualitative study of hospital social workers, she states that an integrated culture is onethat “shares common and clear understandings and identities” (p. 131). Fragmentationand ambiguity, in turn, account for differences in perceptions and experiences amongorganization members. Many researchers, in an attempt to account for these differences,have used Meyerson’s classification when assessing culture.There is considerable disagreement regarding this method of classification.Schein states: If there is no consensus or if there is conflict or if things are ambiguous, then, by Organizational Culture 8 definition, that group does not have a culture in regard to those things. It may have subcultures, smaller groups that have a shared … consensus about something, but the concept of sharing or consensus is core to the definition (1991, p. 248).Meyerson (1991) later argues that ambiguities may be viewed as normal or abnormalwithin an organization’s culture and that most cultural assessments consciously excludeambiguities, since organizational researchers usually study objective and concretephenomena.Culture versus climate: The same or different?Much research has been devoted to the differentiation of culture from climate. Asculture was being developed into a separate field of inquiry in the early 1980s, a commonjustification for its study was its unique qualities, separate from organizational climate.Many articles, books and chapters have been written on this subject. Rather than presentthis debate in its entirety, this paper will attempt to highlight the major elements of thiscontroversy.In an early, simplistic attempt to delineate the two concepts, Schwartz & Davis(1981) stated, “Whatever culture is, it is not climate” (p. 32). This distinction, althoughnot terribly sophisticated, formed the basis of much conceptual development in the 1980s.The disciplinary origins of climate and culture overlap, with both sharing commonsociological threads. Climate research is grounded in Lewin’s Gestalt psychology,whereas culture embodies references to anthropology (Schneider, 2000). Traditionally,climate has been measured with quantitative measurements and is often compared across Organizational Culture 9settings. Generally, climate is classified by its purpose (e.g., climate for service, climatefor productivity).The most accepted definition of climate is “the relatively enduring organizationalenvironment that a) is experienced by the occupants, b) influences their behavior and c)can be described in terms of the values of a particular set of characteristics or attributes ofthe environment” (Tagiuri & Litwin, 1968, p. 25). This definition is quite similar to thatof organizational culture. In fact, several researchers have propagated the idea thatclimate is a manifestation of culture (e.g., Schein, 1984; Reichers & Schneider, 1990;Hatch, 1993) and that the “inadequacies of one approach become the justification for theother” (Denison, 1996, p. 6).During the emergence of culture as a distinct organizational quality, a centralissue was differentiating it from organizational climate. As the culture construct wasfurther developed, and methods for assessment were determined, these two areasapproached convergence. Meyerson, in fact, retrospectively asserted that thedevelopment of culture “represented an ontological rebellion against the dominantfunctionalist or ‘scientific’ paradigm” (1991, p. 256). Is the distinction between climateand culture simply a divergence of methods or disciplines?Recent research indicates that, while not exactly the same, culture and climate arenot as different as originally conceptualized. Denison has written in-depth on thiscontroversy. He begins a lengthy essay on this topic by stating: Although it is clear that culture and climate are, in fact, very different perspectives on organizational environments, it is far less clear that they actually examine distinct organizational phenomena…or whether they represent closely related phenomena that Organizational Culture 10 are examined from different perspectives (1996, p. 3).In fact, it is clear that both culture and climate attempt to address the interplay betweenindividuals and their surroundings, but it becomes a circular debate to determine whichproduces and/or affects the other.Denison (1996) noted that the development of culture wreaked havoc with climateresearchers, introducing new methods and allowing for variation of assessment.Although many acknowledge that climate is a more superficial manifestation of culture, itis less clear if this overlap is indicative of different concepts or simply two aspects of thesame construct. With the introduction of quantitative and mixed methods for study oforganizational culture in the 1990s, this distinction became even more blurred. As theconceptualization and assessment of culture have advanced, it is increasingly apparent tomany organizational researchers that the two concepts differ more in interpretation ratherthan within the phenomena themselves (Denison 1996).Assessment MethodsQualitative ApproachIt can be concluded from the literature on organizational culture that mostconceptualizations are of deep, intangible phenomena not easily objectified. For thesereasons, and because culture was initially differentiated from climate by itsanthropological influence, initial scholarly inquiry about culture employed qualitativemethods. Early studies of organizational culture largely used ethnography or participantobservation to describe cultures, one institution at a time (Druckman, Singer, & Van Cott,1997). The development of cultural study, as distinct from climate study, used theapplicability of qualitative methods as justification for differentiation. Additionally, early Organizational Culture 11researchers believed that standardized, quantitative instruments were inappropriate forcultural assessment because they would be unable to capture the subjective and uniqueaspects of each culture. Opponents of a strictly qualitative approach, however, assertedthat comparison between cultures is not possible using this technique.Quantitative ToolsFrustration with the limited generalizability and time intensiveness of qualitativemethods led to the development of quantitative tools to assess culture. Rousseau (1990)advocates for quantitative instruments, stating that cultural assessment would benefit instrength and validity from the testing of psychometric properties in these instruments. Inorder to support quantitative methods, however, the underlying conception of culturemust be that it is something an organization possesses, rather than embodies,contradictory to some anthropological theory.Cameron & Quinn (1999) argue that it is crucial, if using quantitative instruments,that these be validated to ensure the reporting of underlying values and assumptions,rather than climate. Further, many theorists argue that questionnaires or surveyinstruments are inappropriate for measuring culture in that they “measure the dimensionsof culture determined in advance by the researcher, thus potentially missing or distortingthe actual dimensions of cultures existing a priori in the organization itself” (Druckman,Singer, & Van Cott, 1997, p. 72). Taken together, the weaknesses of using qualitative orquantitative methods alone leave potential for omission of crucial elements of culture.Mixed MethodsIn 1983, Siehl and Martin attempted to bridge this gap by using mixed methods.Since then, mixed methods have emerged as the preferred method for assessing Organizational Culture 12organizational culture. Most recent studies involve some combination of participantobservation, interview, focus group, survey and/or questionnaire. It is believed thatmixed methods allow the most explanation of error variance, greater depth in elaborationof culture as a construct (Alvesson & Berg, 1992) and more opportunity for data analysis(Fleeger, 1993). A great deal of writing has been devoted to promoting and employingmixed methods (Siehl & Martin, 1990; Rousseau, 1990; Ashkanasy, Wilderom, &Peterson, 2000; Alvesson & Berg, 1992; Smith, Francovich, & Gieselman, 2000;Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders, 1990; Fleeger, 1993; Goodridge & Hack, 1996;Siehl & Martin, 1983).Assessment ToolsAs the assessment of organizational culture evolved and quantitative methodsgained popularity and acceptance, various questionnaires and surveys were developed. Itis important to note that some of these tools were developed in order to be marketed tomanagers and were therefore not subject to theoretical development by academicresearchers. Discussion in this paper will be limited to those tools developed by trainedresearchers.Unfortunately, most tools assessing organizational culture were never subjected topsychometric evaluation. It is recognized that there is no ideal instrument as each toolhas limitations for use or scope (Scott, Mannion, Davies, & Marshall, 2003). That beingsaid, the two most cited and scientifically rigorous instruments are the OrganizationalCulture Assessment Instrument (OCAI; Cameron & Quinn, 1999) and the OrganizationalCulture Inventory (OCI; Cooke & Lafferty, 1986).Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) Organizational Culture 13The OCAI uses ipsative scoring scales to categorize organizational culture. Inipsative scoring, respondents assign points to their answers and all answers must sum to apredetermined total. The OCAI is based upon the Competing Values Framework,originally conceptualized by Campbell in 1974. Derived from this framework, the OCAIhas undergone several revisions and, through factor analysis, has a well developedclassification system. Quinn refined Campbell’s work in 1983 to create fourorganizational “types”: Clan, Adhocracy, Hierarchy and Market. Ultimately, these typesbecame the basis for the OCAI. Cameron and Quinn (1999) emphasize that there is noone “correct” typology for an organization. The OCAI assesses the degree of each typerepresented in an organization and presents an individualized assessment ofappropriateness of that typology, given the organization’s goals.The OCAI was deliberately designed to be simple, so as to facilitate maximumparticipation at all levels of an organization. Additionally, it contains generalizedquestions, in order to appeal to many different kinds of organizations. The OCAI, orversions of it also based on the Competing Values Framework, have been used in severalstudies of organizational culture (e. g., Denison, 1990; Cameron & Freeman, 1991; Jones,DeBaca, & Yarbrough, 1997). Its reliability and validity were established in a series ofstudies (Quinn & Spreitzer 1991; Yeung, Brockbank, & Ulrich, 1991; Zammuto &Krakower, 1991).Critics of the OCAI maintain that it does not precisely measure culture, instead“pigeon holing” organizations into a priori diagnostic categories created by researchers(Druckman, Singer, & Van Cott, 1997). Strict qualitative methodologists object on thegrounds that this does not reveal the unique aspects of an organization’s culture, instead Organizational Culture 14lumping results into generic categories. Cameron and Quinn, however, readily admit thatthe OCAI is intended to be both diagnostic and prescriptive in function. Further, ipsativescoring inherently creates a situation where respondents’ answers are dependent uponeach other, since they must sum to a pre-determined total. This can obscure theinterpretation and clarity of results. Proponents of the OCAI point to its ease inimplementation and its low cost.Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI)Similarly, the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI; Cooke & Lafferty, 1986)classifies organizations into three general types of cultures: Constructive,Passive/Defensive and Aggressive/Defensive. Additionally, it evaluates twelve sets ofbehavioral norms within an organization. The OCI has been used for many purposes andis the most widely used industry tool for assessing organizational culture, completed byover 2 million respondents worldwide as of the year 2000 (Cooke & Szumal, 2000).Since this tool has been used so widely, a large information base exists on the behavior ofcultures.The conceptual framework for the OCI was developed by Cooke and colleaguesand is based upon distinguishing between an organization’s concern for people versus itsconcern for task. The OCI tool is built upon the Human Synergistics circumplexconceptual framework, derived via factor analysis from many cultural studies. Subconstructsof the OCI have been empirically supported and validated by numeroussources (Cooke & Rousseau, 1988; Cooke & Szumal, 1993; Xenikou & Furnham, 1996).Similar to the OCAI, organizations are typed and classified into three predeterminedcategories based on the degree of strength to which they represent each category. In Organizational Culture 15addition to assessing the current culture of an organization, the OCI has the capacity todetermine the ideal culture for an organization, allowing for comparison between actualand ideal cultures. This feature has led to the use of the OCI as the basis for planningculture change.A quantitative instrument with similar predetermined categories, the OCI sharesthe same criticisms as the OCAI. Additionally, it is not as user-friendly and simple as theOCAI. The OCI is a lengthier survey and is subject to proprietary analysis, eliminatingthe possibility of internal organizational evaluation. Its widespread use and extensivepsychometric testing make it an attractive option for researchers. Cooke and Szumal(2000) list more international testing (Asia, Africa, Latin America) as a next step in thedevelopment of the OCI.Applicability to Health CareMost work on organizational culture concerns the traditional corporation.Therefore, some adaptation to the central goals and focus of a human servicesorganization are necessary before application to a health care setting. Although notalways explicit, it appears that Schein’s conceptual work and theory have mostinfluenced the study of organizational culture in health care. Schein is frequently cited asthe conceptual reference for this inquiry. Sovie (1993) emphasizes that health careorganizations should be particularly concerned with organizational culture because “theshared beliefs, values, and feelings that exist within an institution direct the perception ofand the approach to the work that is to be done” (p. 72).Two teams of researchers (Gershon, Stone, Bakken, & Larson, 2004; Scott,Mannion, Davies & Marshall, 2003) have completed in-depth searches and evaluated Organizational Culture 16tools used to measure organizational culture in the health care setting. Both teamsreviewed biomedical literature via online databases and consulted with experts in thebehavioral research field. Although most instruments were developed and published inthe mid-1980s, Gershon and colleagues (2004) found that their application to health carewas largely limited to the previous five years. Additionally, most studies were completedin hospitals and targeted nurses in their evaluations. They surmise that this could be inresponse to a 1999 Institute of Medicine report, To Err is Human: Building a SaferHealth Care System, which advocated culture change in order to decrease medical errorrates.Gershon and colleagues also found, predictably, that terminology differed acrossinstruments. Potentially, this contributes to the further confounding of assessment oforganizational culture. Reflecting frustration with the inconsistency of terms, the teamstated: If aspects of the organizational culture are ill-defined, frequently shifting, poorly communicated, not reinforced, and/or poorly supported administratively, both the employees’ collective perceptions and their behaviors (i.e., delivery of care, safe work practices, and teamwork) will be inconsistent (2004, p. 37, emphasis in original).Gershon and team conclude, on the basis of reliability and validity, that theOrganizational Culture Inventory (Cooke & Lafferty, 1986) is most appropriate for use inthe health care setting.A year previous to Gershon’s article, Scott and colleagues (2003) performed asimilar analysis of organizational culture instruments in health care. They identifiedthirteen tools designed specifically to measure culture only (without reference to climate). Organizational Culture 17Nine of these thirteen were used in studies of health care environments. Schein’sconceptualization of organizational culture was used when analyzing each tool, onlyquantitative measures were evaluated.Rather than choosing one “best” instrument for cultural assessment, the teamconcluded that “the choice of instrument should be determined by how organizationalculture is conceptualized by the research team, the purpose of the investigation, intendeduse of the results and availability of resources” (Scott, Mannion, Davies, & Marshall,2003, p. 923). In this way, the team’s recommendations are appropriate to a wider set ofapplications for cultural assessment. Overall, however, Scott and colleagues devote alarge portion of their concluding thoughts to advocating mixed methods. Citing theirearlier work, Scott’s team deemed it appropriate to study surface manifestations ofculture with quantitative methods and follow up with assessment of underlyingassumptions with qualitative techniques. The team then provides examples of studiesusing mixed methods in different order (e.g., Qual-quant, Quant-qual). They determinedthat either order could be appropriate, depending on the goals of the study.ConclusionAfter 25 years of development, the construct of organizational culture has finallyreached some consensus. Although research does not universally subscribe to onedefinition of organizational culture, there is relative agreement on major elements of itsdefinition. Organizational culture exists. It can be ambiguous, but it is unique to eachinstitution and malleable. Organizational culture is socially constructed, arising fromgroup interactions. Organizational Culture 18As the construct has developed, so have methods for assessing it. Beginning withthe assertion that organizational culture can be evaluated using qualitative techniques,researchers have moved on to consider broader methods. 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