Organizational Culture and Leadership, 5th Edition

14THE DIAGNOSTIC QUANTITATIVE APPROACH TO ASSESSMENT AND PLANNED CHANGE¹

In the previous chapter we discussed the broad issues of deciphering culture. In this chapter we zero in on the change leader who wants to know about culture because he or she has a change agenda. Without a precise and concrete notion of the kind of change the leader wants to make, there is no point in assessing the culture. But once the change leader has clearly defined the problem in future-behavior terms, it is time to assess the culture to see how it will aid or hinder the change process. This can be done in two ways:

• Seeking insight by measuring specific dimensions of culture or looking for various typological models of culture—what we call the diagnostic quantitative approach, as illustrated in this chapter
• Seeking insight by using internally focused observations combined with individual or group interviews—what we call the dialogic qualitative approach, as will be described in the following chapter

Many of the diagnostic typologies and profiles that have been proposed by various authors are based on questionnaires or surveys of members of the organization. We will therefore discuss typologies both as theoretical constructs and as labels derived from factor analyzing a lot of perceptual data. The fact that there are a number of different models built around questionnaires requires us to consider how to evaluate the relative validity and utility of such models. Before reviewing some of them, we need ...