An instrument to measure organizational culture

Although statistical evidence seems to be lacking, it is at present widely acknowledged that organizational culture has the potential of having a significant effect on organizational performance. An analysis of sustained superior financial performance of certain American organizations has attributed their success to the culture that each of them had developed. It has been proposed that these organizations are characterized by a strong set of core managerial values that define the ways in which they conduct business, how they treat employees, customers, suppliers and others. Culture is to the organization what personality is to the individual. It is a hidden but unifying force that provides meaning and direction and has been defined as the prevailing background fabric of prescriptions and proscriptions for behaviour, the system of beliefs and values and the technology and task of the organization together with the accepted approaches to these. From the literature, a vast number of dimensions of organizational culture were observed. These dimensions were synthetized and 15 constructs of culture emerged. By means of conventional item construction, item analysis and factor analysis, a questionnaire with acceptable reliability and construct validity was developed to measure organizational culture.