Jennifer A. Chatman describes how leaders can more precisely measure their organization’s culture to ensure that it is aligned with their strategy, facilitating its execution. She details both quantitative and qualitative approaches including the Organizational Culture Profile, natural language processing, and ethnography.
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References
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All three major divisions within Genentech eventually measured their cultures, which yielded significant performance benefits to the entire organization. For the full case see Jennifer Chatman, “Culture Change at Genentech: Accelerating Strategic and Financial Accomplishments,”California Management Review56, no. 2 (2014): 113-129, https://doi.org/10.1525/cmr.2014.56.2.113.
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ChatmanJenniferet al., “Blurred Lines: How Collectivism Mutes the Disruptive and Elaborating Effects of Demographic Heterogeneity in Himalayan Expeditions,” Organization Science30, no. 2 (2019): 235-259, https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2018.1268.
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O’ReillyCharles, “Corporations, Culture, and Commitment: Motivation and Social Control in Organizations,” California Management Review31, no. 4 (1989): 9-25, https://doi.org/10.2307/41166580.
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See Alicia Boisnier and Jennifer A. Chatman, “The Role of Subcultures in Agile Organizations,” in Leading and Managing People in the Dynamic Organization, eds. Randall S. Peterson and Elizabeth A. Mannix (London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), 87-112; Fancis J. Flynn and Jennifer A. Chatman, “‘What’s the Norm Here?’ Social Categorization as a Basis for Group Norm Development,” in Identity Issues in Groups (Research on Managing Groups and Teams, Vol. 5), ed. Jeff Polzer (Leeds: Emerald Publishing Group Limited, https://doi.org/10.1016/s1534-0856(02)05006-5; and, Jesper B. Sørensen, “The Strength of Corporate Culture and the Reliability of Firm Performance,” Administrative Science Quarterly 47, no. 1 (2002): 70–91, https://doi.org/10.2307/3094891.
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ChatmanJennifer A.et al., “Parsing Organizational Culture: The Joint Influence of Culture Content and Strength on Performance in High-Technology Firms,” Journal of Organizational Behavior35, no. 6 (2014): 785-808, https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1928.
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My colleagues and I have written extensively about the OCP and established its reliability and validity elsewhere. See Jennifer A. Chatman, “Matching People and Organizations: Selection and Socialization in Public Accounting Firms,” Administrative Science Quarterly36, no. 3 (1991): 459-484, https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.1989.4980837; Jennifer A. Chatman et al., “Parsing Organizational Culture: The Joint Influence of Culture Content and Strength on Performance in High-Technology Firms,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 35, no. 6 (2014): 785-808, https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1928; Jennifer A. Chatman and Charles A. O’Reilly, “Paradigm Lost: Reinvigorating the Study of Organizational Culture,” Research in Organizational Behavior 36, (2016): 199-224, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2016.11.004; Charles A. O’Reilly, Jennifer A. Chatman, and David F. Caldwell, “People and Organizational Culture: A Q-Sort Approach to Assessing Fit,” Academy of Management Journal 34, no. 3 (1991): 487-516, https://doi.org/10.5465/256404; and David F. Caldwell, Jennifer A. Chatman, and Charles A. O’Reilly, “Profile Comparison Methods for Assessing Person-Situation Fit,” in Perspectives on Organizational Fit, eds. Cheri Ostroff and Timothy A. Judge (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2008), 356–360.
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The full distribution for the number of norms to be placed in each category is most characteristic - two norms, quite characteristic - four norms, fairly characteristic - six norms, somewhat characteristic - nine norms, neutral – twelve norms, somewhat uncharacteristic – nine norms, fairly uncharacteristic – six norms, quite uncharacteristic – four norms, and most uncharacteristic – two norms (see Chatman et al., 2014 for additional details).
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For more analytic details, see Chatman et al., 2014.
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Because we use a correlation coefficient to measure alignment between the current and strategically needed culture, the value can mathematically be 1.0, which would mean the two aggregate profiles are identical. But in practice across thousands of organizations, the highest I have ever seen this alignment is closer to .95, and only after an organization had worked extensively on improving its organizational culture.
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For more extensive information see Jennifer A. Chatman and Andrew Choi, “Measuring Organizational Culture: Converging on Definitions and Approaches to Advance the Paradigm,” in Handbook of Research Methods for Organisational Culture, eds. Cameron Newton and Ruth Knight (Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022), 92-107.
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CorritoreMatthewGoldbergAmirSrivastavaSameer B., “Duality in Diversity: How Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Cultural Heterogeneity Relate to Firm Performance,” Administrative Science Quarterly65, no. 2 (2020): 359-394.
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SeeAmir Goldberget al., “Fitting in or Standing out? The Tradeoffs of Structural and Cultural Embeddedness,” American Sociological Review81, no. 6 (2016): 1190–1222, https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122416671873; and Sameer B. Srivastava and Amir Goldberg, “Language as a Window into Culture,” California Management Review 60, no. 1 (2017): 56-69.
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