Cameron and Quinn’s first chapter (An Introduction to Changing Organizational Culture) sets a radically assertive tone. Their arguments and claim that organizational culture separates all other previous researcher attempts to explain sustained organizational success, both public and private, are at once compelling and doubt-evoking.

Later in Chapter 1 the authors conclude that former initiatives attempted on a global scale, such as TQM, downsizing, and organizational reengineering, all have a common ingredient that determined individual organizational success or failure: the culture; i.e., whether the strategy of choice had adequately addressed what the current culture was and where it needed to go.

The authors cite an example using the famous Chevy Nova/Toyota Corolla joint venture (Fremont Plant) where all other factors remained more/less constant except for the installment of Japanese management. What ensued was a 180-degree turnaround from various assorted negative practices, work performance, and outcomes to across-the-board high visibility positives—all attributed to a monumental shift away from a prevailing crippled culture. These authors offer cultural definition, classification, and diagnosis [Chapters 2-5] of organizational culture, offer prescriptions on how to go about changing it [Chapter 6]; with the final Chapter [Chapter 7]; supplying reliability and validity information on their organizational culture assessment instrument.

Citation

Cameron, K. S. and R. E. Quinn (1999). An Introduction to Changing Organizational Culture. Diagnosing And Changing Organizational Culture. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall 161.