Case Study

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Week 6: The Integrative Dynamic Framework for Managing

Culture Change and Organizational Effectiveness

Learning Objectives:

6.1 Revisiting the integrative framework for organizational culture change: An

example

In the previous reading, we recommended a theoretical framework, which integrated

elements of the OCAI (organizational culture assessment instrument), the CVF (competing

values framework) and the ‘cultural dynamics’ model. The idea was to recommend a

framework, which would allow for the continuous interactions between the main constituent

elements of culture, i.e. assumptions, values, artifacts and symbols, to be observed. The

framework provided a means of understanding how exactly a new type of culture emerges

from the appearance of new values; the ‘trading-off’ process of values; the understanding of

the cultural assumptions, artifacts and symbols associated with the new values; and the way in

which each individual of the organization personalises culture change. The framework was

recommended as a means of exploring culture change in organizations – albeit, it was not

created as a ‘road map’ for cultural change.

However, it is important to discuss the practical usefulness of this framework and, for this

reason, we start this reading with an example of the application of the integrative framework to

the culture change of an organization – let us call it organization “X”.

In an effort to become more competitive, the senior management team of organization ‘X’

decided to initiate organizational culture change. The organization chose the change leadership

• Elaborate on culture change: An example of the applicability of the

integrative dynamic framework to organizational culture change

• Understand the relationship between organizational culture change and

organizational effectiveness

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team, which involved managers, employees and their professional union. Subsequently, the

organizational culture assessment instrument (OCAI) was used by all members of the team in

order to identify the most important areas of change. Following the worksheet for scoring the

OCAI, the organization calculated the average scores for the four different types of culture

provided by each member of the team, as represented by the different answers in the six major

themes/domains included in the OCAI i.e. clan culture (A), the adhocracy culture (B), the

market culture (C) and the hierarchy culture (D). The aim was to reach agreement on the type

of organizational culture needed to facilitate stronger competitiveness in the near future. For

this reason, the team was divided into 6 different sub-groups, each attempting to reach

consensus on the score needed for one of the six major themes of OCAI. Each member

provided scores for all six culture domains of the OCAI in both columns, i.e. the “now” and

“preferred” cultures (please refer to Figures 5.1 and 5.2 of the previous reading to remind

yourselves of the OCAI and its scoring process). In the end, all scores were gathered together

for each of the four different types of culture corresponding to the four different available

answers for each of the OCAI questions, i.e. A, B, C and D. Finally, the average scores for the

four different types of culture were extracted, i.e. the sum of all scores divided by 6. These

scores were, then, used to plot the “now culture” and the “preferred culture” on the ‘competing

values framework’ axes.

For the purposes of our example, let us assume the scores presented in Table 6.1 for a

group of 32 participants (5 sub-groups of 5 people each and 1 group of 7 people – this

arrangement was simply used for a better graphical representation. Ideally, all sub-groups

should be consisted of the same number of people).

Culture A

(Clan)

B

(Adhocracy)

C

(Market)

D

(Hierarchy)

Now 20 12 10 21

Preferred 12 20 22 11

Totals 32 32 32 32

Table 6.1. An example of organizational culture change: Current and preferred

culture profiles (in unit distance)

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Subsequently, we use the ‘competing values framework’ (CVF) in order to plot the “now”

and “preferred” culture profiles according to the score provided for each of the four types of

culture. It is important to remind ourselves of the details associated with the CVF, i.e. that each

type of culture depends on the combination of different idiosyncratic characteristics of cultural

profiles, as follows:

- Internal focus and integration – Flexibility and discretion: Clan culture (A)

- External focus and differentiation – Flexibility and discretion: Adhocracy culture (B)

- External focus and differentiation – Stability and control: Market culture (C)

- Internal focus and integration – Stability and control: Hierarchy culture (D)

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The “now” and “preferred” culture types are plotted on the CVF, as indicated in Figure 6.1

below. The diagonal lines were added to introduce the four different culture types. Τhe

framework implies a continuous operation of the dynamic ‘trading-off’ process of values, as

described in Section 5.3 (ii) of the previous reading. Furthermore, the measurement unit of the

OCAI scores is qualitative (psychological), i.e. it does not refer to a particular numerical

metric, such as ‘cm’ or ‘mm’, etc. In other words, the different OCAI values used are not

meant to be numerically meaningful, but provide a means of ordinal meaningful comparisons

only. For example, visually the (20) unit distance segment must appear to be bigger than the

(10) unit distance segment, but neither the 20 nor the 10 numbers have any numerical

meaningfulness, i.e. any metric may be attached to the word “unit” without making any

difference on the substance of the analysis. Of course, one could use any numerical metric to

draw the distances, but attention should only be given to the ordinal comparisons and not on

the numerical values themselves.

Flexibility and Discretion

Clan (A) Adhocracy (B)

20 20

Internal 12 12 External

Focus and Focus and

Integration Differentiation

Hierarchy (D) 11 10 Market (C)

21 22

Stability and Control

Figure 6.1 Current (“now”) and preferred organizational culture profiles according to

the Competing Value Framework

Current (‘now’) culture

Preferred culture

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We are now able to make a number of observations based on the dynamic interactions

observed in Figure 6.1, as follows:

1. The discrepancies between current and preferred culture types within the

organization.

It is obvious that, by observing the greatest discrepancy between current and preferred

culture profiles, an operational guide for culture change may be derived. In this example,

the greatest distance (cultural discrepancy) is 12 (22-10) units, which appears in the current

and preferred market culture (C) profiles. This essentially means that one of the most

important strategic goals of this organization is to develop a market-oriented culture.

Similarly, the organization believes that adhocratic culture is also desirable in terms of

inspiring commitment to experimentation and innovation (increase of unit distance from 12

to 20). However, the organization wants to move away from older cultural values

associated primarily with hierarchical management practices and friendly human relation

habits, which are considered to be ineffective in terms of customer satisfaction and long-

term viability (decrease of unit distance in clan and hierarchy culture types, 20 to 12 and 21

to 11 units, respectively).

In this way, the strategic goals associated with culture change may be gradually

determined. Therefore, observed cultural discrepancies becomes the first dynamic element

of culture change because they demonstrate how small changes in some elements of

culture, such as values or symbols, could be adequate in terms of activating the initiation of

a new culture. Very small discrepancies may even require adaptation of the existing

culture, only, rather than the initiation of a new culture type.

2. The prevailing culture type

The highest score among the four available for both the “now” (current) and the

“preferred” culture types determines the prevailing/dominant culture type within the

organization. In Figure 6.1, we can see that the prevailing culture type is currently

hierarchy culture and the preferred prevailing culture type for the future is market culture.

The prevailing culture type implies a comparative advantage of the cultural assumptions,

values, artifacts and symbols of that particular culture type compared to the equivalent of

the other culture types. It is important for an organization to be aware of the prevailing

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culture type in order to ensure its viability according to the demands of the industry it

belongs to, but also alignment with organizational strategic objectives. For example, if the

organization of our example operates in an aggressively competitive industry, hierarchical

management practices emphasizing stability and integrative efficiency may not allow it to

survive. Instead, a market-oriented culture would be better in terms of strengthening its

competitive advantage. Similarly, if the strategic objectives of the organization are

associated with a result-oriented management style, goal-oriented leadership style and

outcome-driven performance, the organization will also aim to move towards a market

culture profile and away from clan or hierarchy culture profiles. This is due to the fact that

the organization’s strategic objectives expect focus on external positioning with a need for

stability and control rather than internal maintenance and flexibility. The awareness of the

prevailing culture type is the second dynamic aspect of culture change because it

demonstrates the ongoing fluidity of culture in terms of constantly-changing strategic

objectives or, indeed, a constantly-changing competitive industry environment.

3. Τhe strength of the prevailing culture type

This is determined by the number of the qualitative units “earned” by the prevailing

culture compared to the others based on the OCAI scores. In our case, the hierarchy culture

is only 1 unit aware from clan culture indicating that it is not as strong and established

within the organization as it should be. However, the distance between the hierarchy

culture and the market or adhocracy culture types is significant (11 and 9 units,

respectively). These observations suggest that organization “X” adopted a clear-cut current

objective associated with internal focus rather than external positioning. In other words, the

organization is interested much more in maintaining consistent current operations rather

than expanding those operations based on aggressive competitive strategies.

However, if the organization wants to reverse this objective in the future, the direction

would be to move towards the market or adhocracy culture types, where external focus is

their main characteristic. Indeed, the preferred culture type, as shown in Figure 6.1,

involves a much higher score in market and in adhocracy cultures, compared to clan and

hierarchy scores (22 and 20 vs 12 and 11 units, respectively). Therefore, we are in a

position to conclude that certain future strategic goals of organization “X” are associated

with external competition, outcome-related performance and stability, which are translated

into a market-oriented culture type. Even adhocracy culture is not as compatible to those

goals, as it could, otherwise, be (22-20=2 unit distance, which, although small, is non-

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negligible). This is, perhaps, due to the fact that, although adhocracy culture could satisfy

the goal of external focus and competitiveness, it would not allow the organization to

maintain stability and control over its operations.

Overall, the strength of the prevailing culture is another dynamic element of culture

change -although not as important as the previous ones. The reason should be apparent by

now: the strength of the prevailing culture only allows us to derive a comparison measure

with the remaining culture types, which the organization does not find appealing for the

future, but it does not allow us to understand the mechanics of the emergence of the new

organizational culture following change.

4. Cultural congruence

The various elements of an organization’s culture (assumptions, values, artifacts and

symbols) must appear fully-aligned and coordinated, otherwise there may be a problem in

terms of solidifying and establishing the new culture. This, essentially, means that the unit

distance between culture types, which maintain certain similarities, must appear to be quite

close in order for the different elements of the prevailing culture type to appear adequately

homogeneous (congruence). On the contrary, culture types which are, by definition,

extremely different must demonstrate a large unit distance (cultural discrepancy) between

them to suggest high heterogeneity of the constituent elements of culture (incongruence).

In our example, this is, indeed, the case. Culture types, such as clan and hierarchy,

which maintain the common characteristic of internal focus and integration, show a small

unit distance between them ((21-20) and (12-11) units for the current and preferred culture

types, respectively). Similarly, adhocracy and market culture types maintain the common

characteristic of external focus and differentiation and, therefore, a small unit distance

between them must reflect that. Indeed, the distance is 12-10 (current culture) and 22-20

(preferred culture) units, both of which are adequately small. The reader can easily verify

the same conclusions for the culture pairs of clan and adhocracy or hierarchy and market.

The conclusion is that congruent culture types must maintain a small difference in unit

distance. As a rule of thumb, a ‘small’ distance may be any distance equal or smaller than

the 1/3 of the overall sample (since we equalize the number of participants with units). In

our example, this is smaller than 11 unit-points. Similarly, ‘big’ distance may be regarded

any distance larger than the 1/2 of the overall sample, i.e. in our example, anything larger

than 16. Emphasis should always be given to the larger differences, for obvious reasons.

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Here, it is important to differentiate two aspects: the interpretation given to the unit

distance between similar culture types when the discussion concerns the cultural

congruence or the strength of the prevailing culture. Ιn the former case, distance smaller

than 11 in the sample of 32 was considered to be small indicating cultural congruence, i.e.

homogeneity between the constituent elements of similar culture types, such as “clan” and

“hierarchy” cultures. However, when the same distance is considered in the context of the

strength of the prevailing culture, a unit distance of 2 becomes important. For example, the

difference between “adhocracy” and “market” cultures in the “preferred” culture profiles,

in Figure 6.1, signifies a non-negligible preference of organization “X” towards stability

and control rather than flexibility and discretion. This suggests that, it is always important

to consider the different context in which interpretation of a dynamic element of culture

change operates before deriving any conclusions. In our example, the direction of the

formation of future culture is given from the largest discrepancy/unit distance, but,

subsequently, smaller unit distances between similar culture types, such as clan and

hierarchy or adhocracy and market, are also used in order to identify the organization’s

preference towards the final/prevailing culture type.

In order to better understand this process, let us consider the diametrically-opposite

culture types, which may be found on the two sides of the same diagonal line, in Figure

6.1, indicating incongruent culture types. The unit distances in those cases must not appear

to be close. In other words, if the total1 distance between the clan culture and the market

culture is larger than 11 units, then expected incongruence is confirmed because the

distance is not small, as defined above. However, we normally expect a much larger unit

distance between incongruent culture types in order to ensure that the prevailing culture

type will have good chances to be established in the medium and longer term. If, for

example, the distance is smaller than 11 units, a problem of congruence in the prevailing

culture may appear because the constituent elements of the prevailing culture, i.e.

assumptions, values, artifacts and symbols, are not going to be highly-aligned among

themselves in order to signify a homogeneous and viable culture type. This may mean that

the constituent elements of the prevailing culture type are not going to be characterized by

a significant level of consistency and the multi-faceted tension and ‘trading-off’ process of

1 The term ‘total’ is used here to refer to the sum of two distances, i.e. the distance between the origin of the axes and clan culture and the distance between the origin of the axes and market culture. Given that the origin of the axes passes through diametrically-opposite culture types, we expect the total distance to be adequate in terms of signifying ‘incongruence’ between the two culture types.

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values will continue. This, essentially, suggests a fluid and fragile prevailing culture type,

which may, soon enough, require another change attempt to be initiated.

In our example, it was, indeed, expected that the distances between diametrically-

opposite culture types, i.e. clan and market culture types and hierarchy and adhocracy

culture types, were going to be quite large in order to signify the expected incongruence

between heterogeneous culture types. Indeed, in Figure 6.1, the distances appear to be large

in the current (“now”) culture case, the “preferred” culture case and, more importantly, the

between current (“now”) and “preferred” culture profiles case. More specifically, in our

example, this distance appears to be 30 (20+10) units for clan current (“now”) culture, 34

(12+22) units for clan “preferred” culture and 42 (20+22) for the current (“now”) and

“preferred” clan culture difference. Table 6.2 provides the diametrically-opposite

calculated unit distances for all three culture cases.

Culture case Clan culture vs Market

culture (unit distance)

Adhocracy culture vs

Hierarchy culture (unit

distance)

Current culture 30 33

Preferred culture 34 31

Difference

between current

and preferred

culture types

42

41

Table 6.2 Incongruence between diametrically-opposite culture types

Since those distances are much larger than 11 unit-points, we are in a position to say that

the prevailing culture type is expected to be fully-accepted by the individuals of

organization “X”, leading to a largely-uniform acceptance of the associated assumptions,

values, artifacts and symbols.

However, it is easily observable that the unit distance between the clan and market

current (“now”) culture types and between the adhocracy and hierarchy “preferred”

culture types are smaller than the unit distance in other culture pairs. This suggests that

organization “X” is willing to walk away as much as possible from the clan culture and

strongly adopt the market culture for the future. Similarly, this also suggests that

organization “X” may consider moving away from hierarchy culture and towards

adhocracy culture , but this may only be a temporary phase because observed

incongruence between those culture types does not appear as significant as it should be,

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given the information of our example. Stated differently, this organization may still value

certain aspects of adhocracy culture and the debate between “flexibility and discretion”

and “stability and control” appears to not have been settled, yet.

We conclude this example by saying that there is a clear direction of organization “X”

towards a market-oriented culture and a clear divergence from clan culture and hierarchy

culture. However, adhocracy “preferred” culture is still quite close with the market

“preferred” culture, indicating that an ongoing development still exists before finalizing

the new prevailing culture type of the organization.

For this reason, the organization must continue to review the congruence/incongruence

factor in order to determine if the ongoing debates are due to an actual problem of cultural

acceptance or they are simply due to measurement factors associated with the CVF and the

measurement approach used in our integrative framework.

For example, if two sub-groups of participants had, by definition, different influence

towards or knowledge about a specific OCAI theme, but their views were equally-weighted

through the averaging process, the issue of incongruence might not appear, i.e. we might

end-up with the expected congruence and expected incongruence among the appropriate

culture types. However, the different group-influence, as defined above, would be

dismissed through the averaging process. In other words, the measurement approach would

cause misleading results because the issue of problematic congruence and incongruence

would not be revealed or be reported.

If an organization fails to see issues associated with congruence and incongruence, it is

reasonable to expect that it would miss the opportunity to understand the ongoing debates

and potential concerns of the employees of the organization about the new prevailing

culture type. This, in turn, could cause serious acceptance problems of the new culture,

which may activate a phase of cultural and organizational instability and the initiation of a

new culture change would be inevitable.

It is important to close this analysis by saying that the congruence/incongruence factor

is, perhaps, the most important dynamic element of culture change because it allows us to

derive meaningful insights about the medium and long-term viability, homogeneity,

uniformity and solidifiability of the prevailing culture type, following the initiation of

change.

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6.2 Culture change management and organizational effectiveness

The inter-disciplinary nature of organizational culture literature has produced empirical

findings linking organizational culture with a variety of processes and outcomes. This is an

important development in culture literature because it demonstrates the complex nature of

culture and its multi-dimensional influence on different organizational outcomes, such as

performance, profitability or competitiveness. However, many authors pointed-out that the lack

of homogeneity in research findings accumulation does not easily allow for reliable

conclusions to be derived because a number of, otherwise critical, for culture change,

outcomes cannot be synthesized. The most important of those outcomes was reported to be

organizational effectiveness (Dyer & Reeves, 1995; Hart & Quinn, 1993; Kaplan & Norton,

1992).

In this section, we explore the practical usefulness of the integrative framework,

presented in the previous reading, in the process of understanding the potential impact of

culture change management on organizational effectiveness. For this reason, we will attempt

to identify which types of culture may be more suitable for influencing factors associated with

the outcome of organizational effectiveness.

In the reading of Week 3, we discussed organizational effectiveness in terms of

observing cultural inconsistencies that negatively influence performance, and in terms of

ensuring alignment of the organizational culture with a sense of collective identity of the

individuals who work for the organization. Furthermore, we found that adapting or changing

organizational culture is an inherent factor of the organization’s effective operation and long-

term viability. Therefore, it seems logical to expect that organizational culture management

focuses on ensuring that the representative values of the employees of the organization are

fully-aligned with the prevailing organizational culture. In order to explore this link, we

introduce three different effectiveness indicators, as follows: employee attitudes, operational

effectiveness and financial effectiveness. These are considered to be the most important drivers

of organizational effectiveness (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). We will explore each one of those

indicators according to their relationship with the four different types of culture included in the

integrative framework in order to derive practical implications about the role of organizational

culture change management in organizational effectiveness.

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The indicator employee attitudes involves the cognitions of the employees of the

organization towards the different processes and outcomes of the organization, such as

organizational commitment, job satisfaction, career prospects, organization’s viability, etc.

According to the description of the four culture types involved in the integrative framework, as

described in Section 1.2 (Week’s 1 reading), the clan culture is formed by the primary value of

collaboration. Therefore, this type of culture is characterised by relevant values, such as

attachment, affiliation, trust and support. In these terms, clan culture influence people to

involve themselves in teamwork, participate in decision-making and engage in open

communication. This is precisely the reason why it is reasonable to assume that the clan

culture is highly-compatible with positive employee attitudes.

On the other hand, although hierarchy culture encourages collaboration and

communication, it strives for formalization and consistency, which are not always consistent

values with the formulation of positive employee attitudes.

Along the same lines, the central value of adhocracy culture is autonomy. This is

associated with attention to detail, growth and stimulation. Although autonomy was associated

with positive employee attitudes in the literature (Sashkin, 1984; Kirkman & Shapiro, 2001),

this association remains indirect through the trust level developed between the senior

management team and the employees. In other words, a sense of autonomy could be perceived

by employees as trust on their abilities. This perception, could, subsequently, strengthen

positive employee attitudes towards the organization. However, since this association is

indirect, we would expect that clan culture maintains stronger relationship with the cultivation

of positive employee attitudes compared to the adhocracy culture.

As with the adhocracy culture, market culture fosters positive employee attitudes when

the organization achieves its performance goals; in which case employees derive satisfaction

due to direct or indirect rewards. However, market culture may have the opposite effect when

the organization encourages aggressive competitive policies. In that case, distrust may

negatively influence the employees’ attitudes towards the organization.

Overall, we would expect a much stronger positive relationship between the clan culture

and employees’ attitudes compared with any other type of culture. The employee support

system adopted by the clan culture is, perhaps, the main reason for explaining this relationship.

In other words, clan culture empowers employees and it fosters effective group dynamics,

which reinforce the sense of collective identity. In this regard, any management strategies of

organizational culture change, which aim to align with employee attitudes, should focus on

restoring trust, rapport, shared decision-making, job satisfaction, collaborative environment

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and a sense of commitment and attachment. This approach is expected to, ultimately, ensure

that the new prevailing culture is fully-aligned with the representative employee attitudes and,

hence, the value system of the majority of employees of the organization.

The second indicator of organizational effectiveness is operational effectiveness. This

indicator refers to the innovative products and processes of the organization, as well as the

product and service quality. Clan culture might encourage innovation, but, in practice, strong

participation, employee involvement and open communication might undermine any

innovative approaches. Similarly, the strict hierarchical pattern of management might, also,

undermine innovative ideas due to the negative impact of systemic formalities and regulations.

Furthermore, a market, goal-oriented culture characterized by aggressive competition could

easily hinder innovative performance by augmenting anxiety to meet strictly-defined goals.

However, adhocracy culture encourages the design of new products and services by

emphasizing values, such as growth, stimulation, variety and autonomy. Therefore, it seems

much more compatible with innovation because adhocracy allows employees to take risks and

apply creativity in order to respond to unique and demanding customer needs.

At the same time, operational effectiveness may, also, be achieved though the

enhancement of quality, as stated above, which is a critical indicator of good performance. In

the context of clan culture, improvement of the quality of products and services seems

plausible due to the strong collaborative environment. However, this may not be achieved

given that organizations with clan culture tend to focus on maintaining existing internal

processes, which may be incompatible with the continuously-evolving customer needs. Along

the same lines, adhocracy culture may also be incompatible with quality because autonomy

and emphasis to detail may not generate the level of consistency and reliability needed to

satisfy customer needs. Furthermore, hierarchy culture’s formalized procedures are not

expected to be adaptable enough in order to respond to the evolving complex customer needs.

On the other hand, market culture does seem compatible with the improvement of

quality in products and services. This is because market culture focuses on values of

competence and achievement, which are directly associated with the satisfaction of customer

needs. Indeed, market culture maintains an external focus on customers and competitors to

ensure competitive advantage and anticipate customer’s evolving needs, standards and

expectations (Cameron, et al. 2006). Similarly, market culture seems more driven to apply

information received from customers in order to develop products and services of better quality

compared to other types of culture. This is, perhaps, due to the fact that aggressive competitive

performance is considered successful only when the goal of customer satisfaction is,

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ultimately, achieved. To this end, market culture seems to be the best type of culture in terms

of its capability to strengthen the quality of products and services.

Overall, adhocracy culture and market culture are associated more strongly than other

types with operational effectiveness. Therefore, culture change must be harmonized with risk-

taking initiatives, adaptation, innovation, creativity, but, also, efficient performance,

competence and goal-oriented competition. In this way, culture change is expected to bring

about a degree of operational effectiveness, which will be, inherently, consistent with the value

system represented by the majority of the employees of the organization.

Finally, the third indicator of organizational effectiveness is financial effectiveness.

Financial effectiveness encapsulates the organization’s pursuit of external measures of success,

such as growth (increase of revenues or number of employees), comparative advantage and

profitability. Clan and adhocracy cultures are expected to have a positive relationship with

financial effectiveness given the sense of commitment, flexibility and adaptability

characterizing those culture types. The primary tool of this relationship is team empowerment,

i.e. the extent to which employees, intrinsically, care about their jobs, but they, also, enjoy the

autonomy needed in innovative performance. However, striking the delicate balance between

teamwork and autonomous performance is not easy. Indeed, many authors pointed-out that

human resource management practices and group cohesion are shown to be negatively

influencing the relationship between organizational effectiveness and clan or adhocracy

cultures. Along the same lines, the relationship of financial effectiveness and hierarchy culture

is considered to be negative due to the fact that strict formalization and emphasis on

conformity may compromise innovative performance, which, in turn, reduces profitability and

expansion capabilities.

On the other hand, market culture maintains a strong positive relationship with financial

effectiveness through intense competitive performance, which aims to acquire new customers

and aggressively attack competitors’ market share (Narver & Slater, 1990). In order to achieve

this, market culture utilizes customer feedback and monitors customer satisfaction. These

activities allow market culture to create plans and generate new goals, fully-aligned with

growth, productivity and profitability. Stated differently, market culture aims to integrate

information from customer and competitors in order to device clear and coherent goals in an

effort to maintain and enhance financial effectiveness. Therefore, market culture is considered

to be the best culture type in terms of enhancing financial effectiveness within an organization.

For this reason, managing an upcoming culture change must involve focusing on values

associated with goal-driven performance, outcome-driven competition, customer-centred

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productivity and a generous reward system for good performance. Consequently, any culture

change management, which takes into account the above factors is expected to lead to a

prevailing organizational culture, which is characterized by a level of financial effectiveness

consistent with the value system of the the majority of the employees of the organization.

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5.2 Concluding remarks

Ιn this reading, an example of the integrative dynamic framework for organizational

culture change was provided. The view was to elaborate on the dynamic interactions involved

in the integrative framework presented in the previous reading. A number of observations were

derived based on the example data about the following:

- The discrepancies between current (“now”) and “preferred” culture types within

an organization

- The prevailing culture type of the organization

- The strength of the prevailing culture type

- Cultural congruence/incongruence

The discussion demonstrated the practical usefulness of the integrative framework in

terms of identifying future strategic goals and developing a culture to facilitate the

achievement of such goals.

Subsequently, the four different types of culture involved in the integrative framework,

i.e. the clan culture, the adhocracy culture, the market culture and the hierarchy culture, were

used in order to explore the relationship between culture change management and

organizational effectiveness. This activity was deemed necessary given the consensus in the

literature about the fact that organizational effectiveness is one of the most important outcomes

associated with organizational culture change.

In order to explore the relationship between culture change and organizational

effectiveness, we presented three representative indicators of organizational effectiveness, as

follows: employee attitudes, operational effectiveness and financial effectiveness. The indicator

employee attitudes was mostly associated with clan culture, the indicator operational

effectiveness with adhocracy and market cultures and the indicator financial effectiveness with

market culture.

In the next reading, we will utilise the integrative framework, once again, in order to

examine individual change, as part of culture change within an organization. Furthermore, we

will discuss organizational leadership, emotional intelligence and organizational socialization

in the context of cultural dynamics.

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Reading tips

- As this module is coming to the end, it is important to recognize, once again, the

gradual development of the material. Once you have understood the recommended

integrative framework of culture change, you should try to identify empirical scientific

studies, which utilise the “competing values framework” in order to fully understand

the practicability of the recommended framework. Unlike previous readings, for the

purposes of this reading, you should aim to locate studies with rigorous statistical

analysis. Such studies will help you understand not only how the integrative framework

came about but, more importantly, they will help you identify the robustness, rigour

and reliability of the framework in terms of its applicability in real organizational life.

- At this point, you should also be able to understand the inter-disciplinary nature of

‘culture change’. For this reason, you should aim to locate scientific studies from a

number of different disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, organizational and

management studies, etc. In order to fully-understand the complexity of culture change

and be confident in completing your assignments, please try to combine scientific

results from studies of different disciplines. This will allow you to ‘test’ your acquired

knowledge about important concepts and processes and offer you alternative

perspectives, which you may, subsequently, utilise in your assignment work.

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6.3 References

Cameron, K. s., & Quinn, R. E. (2006). Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture.

The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series, San Franscisco, CA.

Cameron, K. S., Quinn, R. E., DeGraff, J., & Thakor, A. V. (2006). Competing Values

Leadership. Management, 44.

Dyer, L., & Reeves, T. (1995). Human resource strategies and firm performance: What do we

know and where do we need to go? The International Journal of Human Resource

Management, 6(3), 656–670.

Hart, S. L., & Quinn, R. E. (1993). Roles Executives Play: CEOs, Behavioral Complexity, and

Firm Performance. Human Relations, 46(5), 543–574.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1992). The Balanced Scorecard - Measures That Drive

Performance. Harvard Business Review, 70(1), 71–79.

Kirkman, B. L., & Shapiro, D. L. (2001). The impact of cultural values on job satisfaction and

organizational commitment in self-managing work teams: The mediating role of employee

resistance. Academy of Management Journal, 44(3), 557–569.

Narver, J. C., & Slater, S. F. (1990). The Effect of a Market Orientation on Business

Profitability. Journal of Marketing, 54(4), 20.

Sashkin, M. (1986). Participative management remains an ethical imperative. Organizational

Dynamics, 14(4), 62–75.

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