I would like to use Competing Values Framework organizational culture assessment tool OCAI for my research and need some advice about its Likert version. I would be glad to hear the experiences of those who have used this version in different languages and contexts.
Cameron and Quinn's Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) revolves around six questions, to which four (non-exclusionary) answers are possible: for each question, 100 points must be divided among four possible answers depending on the extent to which each adequately describes the organization (in the respondent's opinion). The questions relate to dominant characteristics, organizational leadership, management of employees, organization glue, strategic emphases, and criteria of success.
Based on these inputs to OCAI, an organization is then classified as a Clan, an Adhocracy, a Market, or a Hierarchy. But, so what? And, what next? Of course, OCAI permits a distinction between current (labeled "Now") and future (labeled "Preferred") organizational cultures, a preferred culture describing what respondents hope to have in the future. But, for sure, OCAI will be most useful if—eschewing dogmatic judgment—one uses it to frame (a series of) in-house conversations about culture, preferably in combination with other instruments, such as those of Etzioni (1975), Handy (1978), Harrison (1979), and Goffee and Jones (1998). Schein (2017) offers no typology at the corporate level but has three intraorganizational typologies, e.g., operator, engineer, and executive.
Schein (2017) accepts that one may use models to assess if an organization's culture aids or hinders the change process. But, "the disadvantage and danger of [...] typologies is that (i) they are so abstract that they do not reflect adequately the reality of a given set of phenomena being observed, or (ii) so simple that they force us to oversimplify relevant (perhaps contrary) details to be consistent with the model to which we adhere …" According to Schein (2017), specific issues touching the use of surveys to "measure" culture are that the surveyors may not know what to ask; employees may not be motivated to be honest; employees may not understand the questions or may interpret them differently; what is measured may be accurate but superficial; the sample of employees surveyed may not be representative of the key culture carriers; the profile of dimensions may not reveal their interaction or patterning into a total system; and the impact of taking a survey may have unknown consequences, some of which could be undesirable or even destructive.
That said, Schein (2017) accepts that surveys can be useful and appropriate if particular dimensions of culture are systematically connected to some element of performance; giving a particular organization a profile of itself stimulates a deeper analysis of its culture; the generation of ideas on selected dimensions is a preparation for a merger, acquisition, and joint venture; surveyors wish to test for subculture differences; and surveyors wish to educate employees about certain important dimensions that management wants to work on. Most importantly—for instance when embarking on mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures—Schein (2017) sees the greatest value of typologies in the context of inter-organizational comparisons (before returning to his doubts about their value if we are trying to understand the nuances of one particular organization).
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