Customer Reviews

Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework (Prentice Hall Organizational Development Series)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Our purpose in this book", Cameron and Quinn write, "is not to offer one more panacea for coping with our turbulent times or to introduce another management fad. We agree with Tom Peters that, "If you're not confused, you're not paying attention." Confusion abounds as to prescriptions and proposed panaceas. Instead, our intention in this book is both more modest and, we believe, potentially more helpful. The book provides a framework, a sensemaking tool, a set of systematic steps, and a methodology for helping managers and their organizations adopt the demands of the environment. It focuses less on the right answers that it does on the methods and mechanisms available to help managers change the most fundamental elements of their organizations. It provides a way for managers, at almost any level in an organization, to guide the change process at the most basic level-the cultural level. It provides a systematic strategy for internal or external change agents to facilitate foundational change that can then support and supplement other kinds of change initiatives."

In this context, Cameron and Quinn basically :

* discuss the importance of understanding organizational culture and its place in facilitating or inhibiting organizational improvement efforts.

* provide the instrument (The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument-OCAI) for diagnosing organizational culture and instructions for how to complete and score it. (OCAI produces an overall organizational culture profile.)

* provide a more thorough explanation of the theoretical framework (The Competing Values Framework) upon which the OCAI is based. (The Competing Values Framework explains the underlying value orientations that characterize organizations.)

* illustrate how organizations designed a strategy to change their current culture to better match their preferred culture.

* focus on the personal change needed to support and facilitate culture change.

* provide an instrument (Management Skills Assessment Instrument-MSAI) that helps managers identify the key competencies they will need to develop or improve in order to foster organizational culture change.

* provide suggestions for initiating culture change in each of four types of cultures (market culture, adhocracy culture, clan culture, hierarchy culture).

* provide lists of suggestions for improving management skills and competencies associated with the MSAI.

I highly recommend this invaluable study to all executives.

I took Prof. Cameron's course on "Navigating Change" at the U of M Business School and this book was used as ONE of the tools that could be used in understanding and managing change in an organization's culture. There are many ways to look at organizational culture. This one gives you a means to measure various aspects and get a view of where you are and where you think you need to be. It can elicit helpful discussion and real insights into your organization.

The book gives helpful background and context for the model (what each quadrant means and doesn't mean), the instrument itself, instructions for administering it, and instructions on how to interpret it. It also provides a condensed formula for organizational change and helpful hints on how to begin change in each of the quadrants.

As we used it in class and our term project it helped us understand the organization our team studied and why it was different than its competitors. I think Competing Values Framework is a powerful model that is backed by up with a lot of research and can be very useful when used seriously. This is a very helpful book.

This is the most helpful book available on organizational culture. Their OCAI instrument (for diagnosing organizational culture) alone is worth more than the price of the book. I use Cameron & Quinn's material with every one of my clients.

Dr. Michael Beitler
Author of "Strategic Organizational Change"

The authors provide a great model for understanding and diagnosing organizations. Their cultural quandrant methodology also provides a common language for people within an organization to talk about what they have and what they want. I recommend this for everyone who wants to understand their own organization. Their instrument (OCAI) is both easy to understand and easy to use.

The model presented is an interesting and for the most part effective one. For an alternative model see O'Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell's OCP Method and in particular the commercially available web tools from ThinkShed (www.thinkshed.com) that leverage the method.

Whichever method you use, culture change is ultimately about the application of a consistent approach...my personal preference is the OCP because of the availability of robust web based tools that enable one to penetrate the organization to a much deeper level than is otherwise possible with a paper based model or an interview based model. This can be important if you are wanting to get at deeply rooted and/or problematic sub-cultures.

Smith

Cameron and Quinn do an excellent job of laying out how to diagnoise and change organizational culture. Importantly, they also provide methods and rationale on measuring culture given the competing values framework. One dissapointment was that the authors did not update the performance of many companies discussed in the 3rd edition. However, overall I am pleased with this scholarly publication that explains organizational culture in detail.

Recently tried this with our organization and found it interesting. It's one way to look at culture - I think it's important to have a bunch of tools in your tool kit but at least this offers another approach to a very very complex issue

In the introduction to this book, the authors share the familiar Tom Peters quote, "If you're not confused, you're not paying attention", because the purpose here is "not to offer one more panacea for coping with our turbulent times or to introduce another management fad." In the words of the authors, this book "provides a framework, a sense-making tool, a set of systematic steps, and a methodology for helping managers and their organizations adapt to the demands of the environment. It focuses less on the right answers than it does on the methods and mechanisms available to help managers change the most fundamental elements of their organizations" at the cultural level.

While the authors also state that other proposed approaches to measuring organizational culture have been proposed, and that their intent is not to provide an extensive review of this literature, they also provide what I consider important background information to the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), which includes the facts that the OCAI (based on the Competing Values Framework) is probably the most frequently used instrument for assessing organizational culture in the world today, and that although some versions are longer, some including up to 24 items that together describe organizational culture, the 6 items that are used in this book provide a simpler synthesis that addresses fundamental manifestations of organizational culture.

After walking through the OCAI current profile worksheet, which addresses basic assumptions (dominant characteristics, organizational glue), interaction patterns (leadership, management of employees), and organizational direction (strategic emphasis, criteria of success) that typify the fundamentals of culture, the authors present the two major dimensions organized into four main clusters that define organizational effectiveness. The first dimension differentiates effectiveness criteria that emphasize flexibility, discretion, and dynamism from criteria that emphasize stability, order, and control. The second dimension differentiates effectiveness criteria that emphasize an internal orientation, integration, and unity from criteria that emphasize an external orientation, differentiation, and rivalry.

These four main clusters can be visualized as the Clan, Adhocracy, Hierarchy, and Market quadrants of a graph. Because these quadrant names were derived from the scholarly literature, the authors also conveniently provide counterpart names to which they think business executives and other nonacademic audiences might better relate (Collaborate, Create, Control, Compete). The authors note that while designed to assess organizational culture, these clusters can also be used to assess leadership roles, organizational effectiveness, and management roles, and provide several examples that demonstrate applicability to these other areas. In chapter 6 and Appendix B, the authors even provide an extension to the Competing Values Framework based on the Management Skills Assessment Instrument (MSAI) to address the personal behavior change on which a change in organizational culture depends.

In my opinion, the nine managerial competencies addressed for management across the four quadrants are more tangible (Clan = managing teams, managing interpersonal relationships, managing the development of others, Adhocracy = managing innovation, managing the future, managing continuous improvement, Hierarchy = managing acculturation, managing the control system, managing coordination, Market = managing competitiveness, energizing employees, managing customer service), although while the authors present at length the fact that the four quadrants for organizational culture depend on a "Means-Does Not Mean" analysis to be completed by stakeholders in order to determine what chosen future state organizational culture actually means in a relative sense, this analysis is not provided in the context of managerial competencies directly since these are intended to lead to the desired future state organizational culture.

Overall, however, Cameron and Quinn present the process to diagnose organizational culture extremely well, and they do note repeatedly, as can be expected, that it is not possible to present a cookie-cutter approach because of the continuum nature of culture. From the perspective of a consultant, I especially appreciate the many examples that the authors provide that demonstrate example company profiles and shifts in company culture over time. The average culture profiles for various industry groups that the authors present are also well received, although it is important for potential readers of this book to realize that the categorizations for these groups are very broad.

For example, consulting services might technically fall under the "services" group, which obviously encompasses a wide spectrum of companies, although in such a case it might be beneficial to look at cultural profiles of client industry groups. As a consultant in the software industry, I could not help but notice that this book ties in well with a book I read several years ago entitled "Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed", by Barry Boehm and Richard Turner. While that text is narrowly focused on choosing a software development methodology, a culture dimension of plots reminiscent of those seen in the book under review here can be seen as output from what Cameron and Quinn provide.

Interestingly enough, while the term "changing" sits alongside "diagnosing" in the title of this work, it is really not until Appendix C and Appendix D that the former is addressed with any substance. It is actually understandable why this is the case - change is multifaceted and covered by numerous other titles - but I would personally like to see the authors expand on these appendixes in another book, because the content provides hints for initiating organizational culture change and improving personal management competencies that specifically address the quadrants discussed in the book. Well written and focused business text recommended to anyone seeking understanding of organizational culture or personal management competencies as they relate to their own situations or to situations of customers and clients.

True Transformational change (of the ilk we must face to re-position for the next 10 years) requires attention to organizational culture - it is ignored at the peril of Project ROI and Strategy sustainability. We must not be intimidated by the risk rather we must take courage from the imperative.

Cameron and Quinn are renowned for their leadership in the area of Organizational Culture and this book directly addresses culture in the context of Strategic Change. It offers very tactical and pragmatic approach, framework and tools.

Gail A. Severini, CMC
CEO, Symphini Change Management Inc
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An excellent and practical book on a very elusive concept. Provides a 'model' to diagnose and shape organisational culture. A CD/DVD or web address where the questionnaires could be accessed from would have been great, though.