Management Application Exercise

Assessing Corporate Culture Preferences & Fit

Scale #1, Background Information

Purpose

This self-assessment is designed to help you identify to identify a corporate culture that

fits most closely with your personal values and assumptions.

Instructions Open the url and you’ll see that you’re asked to read 12 pairs of the statement in the

Corporate Culture Preference Scale. You can quickly choose the option that’s closest to

your work preferences. After completing all 12 items, the scale will be scored quickly

for you and provide results for 4 different subscale of culture. Then students use the

scoring key to calculate their results for each subscale. You should think about the

importance of matching job applicants (including yourself) to an organization’s dominant

values.

Comments

The subscale dimensions for this self-assessment were based on the book by M.

Woodcock and D. Francis, Unblocking Organizational Values, (Glenview, Illinois: Scott

Foresman and Company, 1990). In this book, the authors identify 4 main types of

cultures:

 Control Culture: This culture values the role of senior executives to lead the organization. Its goal is to keep everyone aligned and under control.

 Performance Culture: This culture values individual and organizational performance and strives for effectiveness and efficiency.

 Relationship Culture: This culture values nurturing and wellbeing. It considers open communication, fairness, teamwork, and sharing a vital part of

organizational life.

 Responsive Culture: This culture values its ability to keep in tune with the external environment, including being competitive and realizing new

opportunities.

These four subscales represent a small number of all possible values. No scale is

inherently good or bad. Each is effective in different situations.

This scale forces you to give priority to one cultural value over another. It is

useful for identifying a preferred dimension. For example, some of you might really

prefer all four about equally, but this scoring method tends to produce more distinctive

scores. You might find some comparison data useful for interpreting your scores and

that data is presented below here. First is data collected on Australian MBA students,

who ranged in age from mid-20s to over 40 years old. Most were full-time employees

(engineers managers, etc.). About one-third were female and most were Caucasian

(about 20 percent Chinese, Malay, or Indian). The U.S. MBA sample were an almost

equal mix of women and men, mostly in their early 30s. Even though there are subtle

differences between these two groups, the important point is that people vary widely in

their preference for different cultural values. The control culture has the least dispersed

results, but even this dimension has scores across most of the range.

SURVEY SAMPLE SCORE Control Performance Relationship Responsive

Australian MBA

Students

(n=169)

Low

High

1=43%

2=28

3=18

4=9

5=1

6=0

1=0%

2=9

3=34

4=34

5=19

6=1

1=1%

2=6

3=6

4=18

5=24

6=37

1=0%

2=0

3=9

4=12

5=30

6=39

U.S. MBA Students

(n = 370)

Low

High

1=33%

2=30

3=23

4=11

5=3

6=0%

1=0%

2=6

3=27

4=30

5=27

6=9

1=3%

2=3%

3=9%

4=27%

5=25%

6=27%

1=0%

2=0

3=12

4=25

5=25

6=30