What Do We Know About Developing and Sustaining a Culture of Innovation

jstengel — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:05:25 GMT

This article gives a brief overview of organizational culture including its definition, various models, and both qualitative and quantitative methods of studying an organization’s culture. The author begins by discussing culture in general and sites Hofstede’s early findings from research with IBM. She then talks about management research on specific dimensions of organizational culture (innovation and risk taking, attention to detail, outcome orientation, people orientation, individual and team orientation, and aggressiveness) and about a two dimensional framework of culture which looks at internal focus versus external focus as well as stability and control versus flexibility and discretion. Finally, the article explores both qualitative and quantitative methods of observing an organization’s culture and advocates for a combination of both. The author recommends specific assessment tools, consulting firms, and suggests overall, that outcomes of assessment be tied to an organization’s need for innovation.

Assessment tools:

Survey assessments
Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI)
Organizational Culture Index (OCI)

Citation

Aiman-Smith, L. (2004) What Do We Know About Developing and Sustaining a Culture of Innovation. What Do We Know Journal Review, 1-5 DOI

An Introduction to Changing Organizational Culture

jstengel — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:55:16 GMT

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.

Search results matching tags 'Organizational culture' and 'Tool'

What Do We Know About Developing and Sustaining a Culture of Innovation

Citation

An Introduction to Changing Organizational Culture

Citation