The Content of Organizational Culture

Interpreting the different layers of organizational culture helps define the content or substance of culture. Most re­searchers either conduct a qualitative analysis to assess the deeper layers of organizational culture (e.g., Brannen & Salk, 2000; Casey, 1999; Schein, 1992) or use surveys to assess espoused values and beliefs quantitatively (e.g., Buenger,


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Daft, Conlon. & Austin, 1996; Cooke & Szumal, 2000; O'Reilly, Chatman, & Caldwell, 1991) or a set of work practices thought to underlie organizational culture (e.g., Christensen & Gordon, 1999; Hofstede, 1998; Hofstede et al., 1990). Ashkanasy, Broadfoot, and Falkus (2000) reviewed questionnaire measures of organizational culture and con­cluded that many are used for consultative purposes, lack a sound theoretical basis, are infrequently used, and lack validity. Furthermore, other researchers (e.g., Schein, 1992, 2000; Trice & Beyer, 1993) do not accept the premise that surveys are a valid measure of organizational culture and con­clude that they should not be used as the principal method for assessing organizational culture.

That said, we uncovered four frequently used surveys that are theoretically based and have been subjected to pre­liminary validation. Each is based on a different conceptual framework and results in a different taxonomy of organiza­tional culture. These taxonomies are the basis of the Organi­zational Culture Inventory (OCI; Cooke & Lafferty. 1987), the Competing Values Framework (CVF; Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983), the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP; O'Reilly et al., 1991), and the work practices survey (Hofstede etal., 1990).

The Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI)

The OCI is a 120-item survey that assesses 12 sets of norma­tive beliefs. These norms are categorized into three types of or­ganizational cultures. A constructive culture, the first cultural type, endorses normative beliefs associated with achievement, self-actualizing, humanistic-encouraging, and affiliative. The second type, a passive-defensive culture, reinforces values re­lated to seeking approval, being conventional or dependent, and avoiding accountability. Finally, an aggressive-defensive culture endorses beliefs characterized as oppositional, power oriented, competitive, and perfectionist. See Cooke and Szumal (2000) for a complete description of the theoretical foundation of the OCI.

A series of studies reported in Cooke and Szumal (2000) re­veal that the three types of culture are significantly correlated with antecedent variables reflecting organizational structure, management practices, technology, leadership, and a variety of individual (motivation, social loafing, performance, job sat­isfaction, stress), group (teamwork, quality of work relations, unit-level quality), and organizational (quality of customer service) outcomes. Cooke and Szumal conclude that strong norms for constructive behaviors are more likely to lead to de­sirable outcomes. Evidence supporting the reliability and va­lidity of the OCI is provided by Cooke and Rousseau (1988) and Cooke and Szumal (1993,2000).


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Competing Values Framework (CVF)

The CVF was developed by Quinn and his associates (Quinn & McGrath, 1985; Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983) to explain dif­ferences in the values or ideologies underlying models of or­ganizational effectiveness. The CVF can be used to "explore the deep structures of organizational culture, the basic as­sumptions that are made about such things as the means to compliance, motives, leadership, decision making, effective­ness, values and organizational forms" (Quinn & Kimberly, 1984, p. 298), which results in classifying culture into four types. A group culture, the first cultural type, is based on val­ues associated with affiliation, emphasizing the development of human resources and employee participation in decision making. The second type, the developmental culture, is driven by a positive orientation toward change, with values focusing on flexibility and the accomplishment of organizational goals. A hierarchical culture, the third type, endorses values and norms associated with a bureaucracy. Here, culture tends to be inwardly focused and management information systems are used to create stability and control. The fourth type, the rational culture, reflects values and norms associated with achievement, planning, productivity, and efficiency.

Researchers using the CVF tend to use case studies (Zammuto, Gifford, & Goodman, 2000; Zammuto & Krakower, 1991), Likert-type scales (e.g., Buengeretal., 1996; Chang & Weibe, 1996; McDermott & Stock, 1999), or short ipsative scales (Shortell et al., 1995; Smart & St. John, 1996). Although a few studies have supported the structure and in­tegrity of the CVF (e.g., Howard, 1998; McDermott & Stock, 1999; Zammuto & Krakower, 1991), there has not been a com­prehensive assessment of the construct validity of measures used to operationalize this model, and conclusions based on studies using the CVF should be interpreted with some caution.

The Organizational Culture Profile (OCP)

The OCP was originally developed to measure person-organization fit (O'Reilly et al., 1991). It contains 54 value statements that were derived from an extensive review of academic and practitioner writings on organizational culture. Respondents use the Q-sort methodology to sort the values into categories ranging from the least characteristic to most characteristic of their respective organizations or their per­sonal preferences. Research using the OCP has shown that it possesses interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, within-and between-group differences, and predictive validity. However, factor analyses of the 54 items have identified different factor structures across samples (cf. O'Reilly et al., 1991; Vandenberghe, 1999). In an attempt to overcome


measurement problems associated with the original OCP Ashkanasy, Broadfoot, et al. (2000) developed a 50-item sur­vey to measure 10 dimensions of organizational culture. Un­fortunately, validation studies of this instrument uncovered a two-factor solution, thereby failing to support the a priori di­mensionality of this newly proposed instrument. When the original OCP was used as a measure of person-organization fit, fit was positively associated with individuals' organiza­tional commitment, job satisfaction, intention to quit (O'Reilly et al.), and turnover (Vandenberghe, 1999).

Work Practices Surveys

Hofstede et al. (1990) developed a 61-item measure of per­ceived work practices based on a series of in-depth interviews with nine informants from 20 work units spanning ten differ­ent organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands. Hofstede et al. proposed that work practices are the visible part of orga­nizational culture. Factor analysis of these perceptual items re­sulted in six underlying dimensions of organizational culture: process oriented versus results oriented, employee oriented versus job oriented, parochial versus professional, open sys­tem versus closed system, loose versus tight control, and nor­mative versus pragmatic. Work practices were used to identify organizational subcultures (Hofstede, 1998) and were associ­ated with measures of organizational values, work structure, top management demographics, organizational demographics (Hofstede et al., 1990) and revenue growth (Christensen & Gordon, 1999).

Examination of the work practice measures indicates that they assess employees' perceptions of general and specific work-environment characteristics. Consistent with our defin­itions of culture and climate, we believe that these measures are actually tapping climate, not culture, and recommend that they not be used as indicators of organizational culture.

Summary

Controversy still exists about the appropriateness of various methods for assessing culture. Some researchers reject the va­lidity of quantitative studies because these studies are based on the assumption that culture represents something that an organi­zation has, rather than something an organization is (Smircich, 1983). In contrast, others reject the subjective and idiosyncratic interpretations associated with qualitative case studies. We con­cur with Schultz and Hatch (1996) that it is impossible and illu-sionary to resolve this paradigmatic argument and thus echo Ashkanasy, Broadfoot, et al. (2000) and Rousseau (1990) in suggesting that researchers should use multiple methods to as­sess multiple levels of organizational culture.


Antecedents of Organizational Culture

To date, there has not been a comprehensive examination of the antecedents of organizational culture. What has been writ­ten in this regard is predominantly theoretical. For example, Aycan et al. (1999) propose that the enterprise environment, which includes market characteristics, nature of the industry, ownership or control, resource availability, and sociocultural dimensions, is a direct antecedent of organizational culture. Tesluk, Fair, and Klein (1997) similarly hypothesize that industry and business environments are the key antecedents of organizational culture. Other models of organizational effec­tiveness or productivity, however, treat organizational culture as an exogenous variable (e.g., Kopelman et al., 1990) and do not attempt to identify antecedents of culture. In partial support of these propositions, the extent of strategic planning (Oswald, Stanwick, & LaTour, 1997) and manufacturing strat­egy strength (Bates, Amundson, Schroeder, & Morris, 1995) were significantly associated with organizational culture.

A somewhat different hypothesis was proposed by G. George, Sleeth, and Siders (1999) and by Schein (1983). They predicted that senior leaders' vision and behaviors were the key antecedents of an organization's artifacts and values and that an organization's culture is originally formed by the founder's values. Future research is clearly needed to exam­ine the antecedents of organizational culture and to investi­gate the techniques leaders use to embed culture.

Outcomes of Culture

Culture has been viewed as a key driver of organizational ef­fectiveness and performance (e.g., Deal & Kennedy, 1982; . Peters & Waterman, 1982) and a source of sustained compet-" itive advantage (Barney, 1986). We identified three summary reviews of literature pertaining to the relationship between culture and performance (Lim, 1995; Siehl & Martin, 1990; Wilderom, Glunk, & Maslowski, 2000), and all three resulted in similar conclusions.

Siehl and Martin (1990, p. 242) concluded "that it is un­wise and misleading to justify studying culture in terms of its links to financial performance, since such a link has not been—and may well never be—empirically demonstrated." They noted that there were measurement problems plaguing past research as well as a lack of theory to explain why such a relationship should be expected in the first place. Lim (1995) summarized both idiographic and nomothetic studies and concluded that "the present examination does not seem to indicate a relationship between culture and the short-term performance of organizations, much less to show a causal re­lationship between culture and performance" (p. 20). Based


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on a review of 10 quantitative studies, Wilderom et al. (2000) concluded that most studies were cross-sectional, used unval-idated and ad hoc measures of culture, relied on measures of performance that were convenient and accessible rather than theoretically based, and could not clearly establish the direc­tion of the relationship between culture and climate.

Our search of the literature was consistent with these reviews. There is a lack of theoretical development around the relationship between culture and performance, there are prob­lems with the measurement of both culture and financial per­formance, empirical evidence does not support the idea that organizational culture predicts organizational performance, and longitudinal research is lacking. We also note that re­searchers have not examined a more inclusive list of outcomes other than financially based measures (Sheridan, 1992, is an exception, showing that a culture emphasizing interpersonal relationship values had lower turnover rates than a culture fo­cusing on accomplishment of work values). Furthermore, in­consistent relationships between organizational culture and performance may be due to the failure to examine potential moderators (e.g., industry) and mediators (e.g., organizational climate), as suggested in Figure 22.1.

CLIMATE

This section provides a brief review of the climate construct. We begin by discussing the historical roots and theoretical un­derpinnings of the construct, elucidating issues pertaining to the objective versus perceptual aspect of climate, and aggre­gation. We then examine the content of climate and summarize research findings on antecedent and outcome relationships.