ALINA-GEORGIANA
PROFIROIU
AND
ROXANA HURDUBEI
(IONESCU)
A REVIEW OF ORGANISATIONAL
CULTURE INSTRUMENTS UTILISATION
IN 11 COMPANIES FROM DIFFERENT
GEOGRAPHICAL REGIONS
Proceedings of the 11th Administration and Public
Management International Conference
”Strategic Management for Local Communities”
October 2015
Topic of the Article
 More and more companies across the word consider the organisation
culture vital for the performance of their employees and ultimately
for their business success
 To identify and assess the organisation culture a number of
instruments have been developed by different publishers for
research and consultancy purposes
 Organisational culture instruments vary greatly in terms of
theoretical approach
 Some authors consider there is a little practical application of these
tools.
Roxana Hurdubei – October 2016
2
Research Question
The purpose of this research is to investigate the following:
 How interested are a diverse range of companies from different
geographical regions in profiling their organisational culture
 If companies prefer to use a standard instrument or develop a
custom made questionnaire and what is the rational behind their
choice
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Methodology
The study was made by:
 Conducting a literature review to understand what instruments have
been previously developed and standardised for profiling and
measuring the organisation culture
 Developing a questionnaire and administering it to companies across
different industries and geographical locations investigates if what is
their methodology for measuring and profiling the organisation
culture
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Review of organisation culture assessment instruments
Following instruments have been reviewed:
 The Values Survey Module 2013
 The Organizational Cultural Assessment Instrument (OCAI)
 “Measuring Core Dimensions of Organisation Culture: A Review of
Research and Development of a New Instrument” - N. Delobbe, R.R.
Haccoun and C Vandenberghe (2005)
 “Measuring and Assessing Organisation Culture in the NHS” - R.
Mannion (2008)
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Review of organisation culture assessment instruments
The Values Survey Module 2013
 The Values Survey Module 2013
 30-item paper-and-pencil questionnaire
 Developed for comparing culturally influenced values and sentiments
of similar respondents
 Aims to compare two or more countries, or sometimes regions within
countries.
 Based on the work of G. Hofstede and his co-researchers
 It allows scores to be computed on six dimensions of national
culture, on the basis of four questions per dimension
1. Power Distance Index (PDI)
2. Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV)
3. Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS)
4. Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI)
5. Long Term Orientation versus Short Term Normative Orientation
(LTO)*
6. Indulgence versus Restraint (IND)
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Review of organisation culture assessment instruments
Organizational Cultural Assessment Instrument (OCAI)
 The Organizational Cultural Assessment Instrument (OCAI)
 Is a psychometric tool developed by Cameron and Quinn (2000)
 Its purpose is to help organizations identify their current and
preferred culture.
 Organizations can then utilize these results to assess both the
current cultural state and also to identify gaps between current and
desired futures
Roxana Hurdubei – October 2016
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Review of organisation culture assessment instruments
Measuring Core Dimensions of Organisation Culture
 “Measuring Core Dimensions of Organisation Culture: A Review of
Research and Development of a New Instrument” - N. Delobbe, R.R.
Haccoun and C Vandenberghe (2005)
 The article presents the comparative study of 20 organisation culture
instruments.
 There is no consensus on a finite set of key dimensions able to
describe and compare organisational culture
 Analysed the dimensions measured by current questionnaires and
synthetized them into four (4) core dimensions that are common:
 People orientation
 Innovation
 Control
 Outcome orientation
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Review of organisation culture assessment instruments
Measuring and Assessing Organisation Culture
 “Measuring and Assessing Organisation Culture in the NHS” - R.
Mannion (2008)
 Comprehensive review of the ideas and themes raised by the
organisational culturists
 Presents the result of a thorough study of 24 organisational culture
assessment tools
 Identified that even though the instruments vary greatly in terms of
theoretical approach, level of culture they tap into and pragmatism
 There is a little practical application of these tools
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Review of organisation culture assessment instruments
 Ready made instruments available in the market use typologies that
allow the categorisation of different organizations into types. Such
typologies have
 the advantage of simplifying the process, allowing for
benchmarking and building higher-order theoretical categories
 the disadvantage of being so abstract that they often fail to
describe accurately a particular organization. (E. Schein, 2004)
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The questionnaire
 Designed to investigate
 if companies use any instrument for profiling the organisation culture
 if this instrument is developed in-house or bought off the shelf from
one of the publishers that are available in the market.
 I has a total of 16 questions
 Questions are grouped differently for companies who use
organisational culture instruments and for those who do not formally
investigate their corporate culture
 9 closed questions
 7 open questions that look for qualitative data
 The questionnaire was automated and administered online from
June to September 2015 to companies from Romania, Middle East
and Asia.
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Participation to the study
 16 companies were invited to participate to the study
 Just 11 companies completed the questionnaire
 They have operations across United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia,
India, Pakistan and Romania in a diverse range of industries and
their number of employees range from 7 to 700.
No crt
Approx. no of
employees
Country
Industry
1
UAE
Automobile
750
2
Saudi Arabia
Oil and Energy, Manufacturing
100
3
India
Engineering
135
4
UAE
Education
300
5
Pakistan
Fashion retail
600
6
UAE
Banking
120
7
UAE
Tourism
80
8
UAE
Facilities management
250
9
Romania
Finance
25
10
Romania
Human Resources
7
11
UAE
Interior Design
25
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Results of the study – importance of organisational
culture
 8 from 11 companies consider organisational culture being important
or very important for their success
 1 company considers it neutral and 1 company considers
organisational culture not important for its success
 Companies that have representatives who answered the
organisational culture is neutral or not important do not use
instruments for measuring and profiling it and they do not expect to
use any of these instruments in the future.
 The representatives from the 5 companies that do not use any
organisational culture instruments do not expect their company to
use any of these instruments in the future therefore, they do not
plan to buy off the shelf nor to develop their instrument internally.
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Results of the study – use of organisational culture
instruments
 6 from 11 companies responded that organisation culture is
regularly investigated and profiled
 The questionnaires administered by 5 companies develop their
questionnaire internally and 1 company administers an off the shelf
questionnaire
 In the questionnaires developed internally, companies focus on
specific areas they consider important for their success including:
 Health and safety
 Human resources
 Satisfaction with line manager
 Policies
 Communication
 Teamwork
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Results of the study – in-house development of the
organisation culture questionnaire and action planning
 As reasons to internally develop the questionnaire instead of
administering a standardised instrument that will allow for
benchmarking, the respondents mentioned:
 Availability of internal qualified staff who can manage the process
 Addressing the organisation’s specific needs
 Action plan to address the areas of development identified in this
exercise is developed by all 6 companies who administer
organisation culture questionnaires
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Conclusion:
 Organisation culture is considered important for business success by
human resources professionals and managers
 Most companies prefer to develop the questionnaire themselves for
better addressing their specific needs even though, there are a
variety of instruments in the market that offer standardisation and
the opportunity to benchmark with other organisations
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Thank You!