The importance of culture is highlighted immediately in Module 1
should be well understood when defining any digitalization program. This will enable a better chance of success by immediately working within group norms while integrating cultural change into your digital strategy.
are some of the most common approaches to classifying corporate cultures.
I am always fascinated by Geert Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of National and Organizational Culture (#4). This has been adopted to assess corporate culture more deeply (#10).
Please share any experiences with these solutions and as always, please help us identify gurus in this early and essential element of digital transformation.
1. Charles Handy’s Four Types of Culture:
Power Culture: Centralized authority, where power is held by a few individuals. Decision-making is fast, but it can be autocratic.
Role Culture: Defined roles and responsibilities, with clear hierarchical structures. Bureaucracy and rules dominate.
Task Culture: Teams are formed to solve particular problems, and power shifts based on expertise. It’s dynamic and flexible.
Person Culture: Individual talents and autonomy are prioritized. Often seen in academic or professional environments.
2. Deal and Kennedy’s Corporate Culture Model:
Tough-Guy, Macho Culture: High-risk environments where feedback is immediate. Common in sectors like investment banking and advertising.
Work Hard, Play Hard Culture: Focuses on fun and action, with fast feedback. Common in sales-driven organizations.
Bet-Your-Company Culture: High-risk decisions with slow feedback, typical in industries like oil exploration or aerospace.
Process Culture: Low-risk and slow feedback. Bureaucratic and detail-oriented, often seen in large government agencies or traditional corporations.
3. Quinn and Cameron’s Competing Values Framework:
Clan Culture: Family-like, with a focus on mentoring, nurturing, and collaboration.
Adhocracy Culture: Dynamic and entrepreneurial, with a focus on innovation and risk-taking.
Market Culture: Results-oriented, with a focus on competition, achievement, and meeting targets.
Hierarchy Culture: Structured and controlled, with a focus on efficiency, stability, and doing things right.
4. Geert Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of National and Organizational Culture:
Power Distance: Degree to which less powerful members expect and accept power to be distributed unequally.
Uncertainty Avoidance: Degree to which people are uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.
Individualism vs. Collectivism: The balance between personal autonomy and group loyalty.
Masculinity vs. Femininity: Focus on competitiveness and achievement (masculine) vs. quality of life and nurturing (feminine).
Long-Term vs. Short-Term Orientation: Focus on future rewards (long-term) vs. tradition and the past (short-term).
Indulgence vs. Restraint: The extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses.
5. Schneider’s Culture Model (Four Cultures of Organization):
Collaboration Culture: People-focused, with an emphasis on working together and team spirit.
Control Culture: Hierarchical and structured, focusing on order, safety, and stability.
Cultivation Culture: Focused on personal development, growth, and learning.
Competence Culture: Performance-driven, with a focus on achieving and maintaining high standards of excellence.
6. Johnson and Scholes’ Cultural Web:
This model emphasizes how different elements (like symbols, rituals, routines, stories, power structures, and control systems) interact to create an overall cultural paradigm within an organization.
7. Edgar Schein’s Levels of Culture:
Schein identifies culture at three levels:
Artifacts: Visible organizational structures and processes.
Espoused Values: Strategies, goals, and philosophies explicitly stated by the organization.
Basic Assumptions: Deeply embedded, unconscious beliefs, and assumptions that are taken for granted.
Each of these models provides a different lens for understanding corporate culture and can help identify how organizations function internally, manage change, and influence employee behavior
8. Gallup’s Employee Engagement Survey:
This survey measures employee engagement through 12 core elements, known as the Q12. These elements include questions about clarity of expectations, recognition, opportunities for growth, and the degree to which employees feel connected to the company’s mission and purpose.
Cultural Readiness: High employee engagement often indicates a culture that is conducive to transformation, as engaged employees are more likely to embrace change, be innovative, and align with company goals. Low engagement scores, on the other hand, may highlight areas of cultural resistance or disengagement that need to be addressed for a successful transformation.
9. Denison Organizational Culture Survey:
This survey focuses on how organizational culture impacts business performance. It evaluates culture across four key traits: Mission, Consistency, Involvement, and Adaptability. These traits provide insights into how well an organization can respond to changes, adapt to new strategies, and engage employees in transformation efforts.
Cultural Readiness: A culture that scores high in adaptability and involvement is typically more ready for transformation, as employees are aligned with company goals, are engaged in decision-making, and can pivot easily when required.
10. Hofstede Insights Organizational Culture Scan:
This tool is based on Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions but adapted to assess organizational culture. It looks at the values driving behavior within the company and how these align with or resist digital and business transformations.
Cultural Readiness: Organizations scoring high on flexibility and innovation within this model may be more open to change and ready for transformation. Conversely, organizations with a high-power distance and resistance to uncertainty may require more change management efforts.
11. Leadership and Change Readiness Assessments:
These assessments evaluate leadership’s alignment with transformation initiatives, including their ability to communicate vision, empower teams, and lead through change. It’s essential for leadership to be aligned with cultural transformation for success.
Cultural Readiness: If leadership demonstrates a strong commitment to driving change and fostering a culture of innovation, the organization will be better positioned for transformation. A misaligned leadership culture can hinder transformation efforts.
12. SCARF Model (David Rock):
The SCARF model looks at five domains that influence human behavior in social situations: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. It’s particularly useful in understanding how employees react to change and transformation.
Cultural Readiness: Understanding how these factors play into employee engagement and resistance can help identify readiness and areas of concern when planning a transformation. For example, cultures where employees have low autonomy or experience uncertainty may resist change.
13. Kotter’s Cultural Change Assessment:
Based on John Kotter’s 8-step change model, this tool assesses an organization’s ability to manage and sustain cultural change. It evaluates factors such as urgency, coalition building, vision communication, and anchoring change within the corporate culture.
Cultural Readiness: This assessment can reveal whether the organization is culturally ready to undergo and sustain transformation, especially in how well change is communicated and embraced across different levels.
14. ADKAR Model (Prosci):
The ADKAR model focuses on five building blocks for successful change: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. It’s often used in change management to measure individual and organizational readiness for transformation.
Cultural Readiness: By assessing where employees fall in each stage of the model, organizations can gauge whether the culture supports or resists transformation efforts. High awareness and desire indicate readiness, while low scores in ability and reinforcement highlight areas to address.
The importance of culture is highlighted immediately in Module 1
should be well understood when defining any digitalization program. This will enable a better chance of success by immediately working within group norms while integrating cultural change into your digital strategy.
are some of the most common approaches to classifying corporate cultures.
I am always fascinated by Geert Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of National and Organizational Culture (#4). This has been adopted to assess corporate culture more deeply (#10).
Please share any experiences with these solutions and as always, please help us identify gurus in this early and essential element of digital transformation.
1. Charles Handy’s Four Types of Culture:
Power Culture: Centralized authority, where power is held by a few individuals. Decision-making is fast, but it can be autocratic.
Role Culture: Defined roles and responsibilities, with clear hierarchical structures. Bureaucracy and rules dominate.
Task Culture: Teams are formed to solve particular problems, and power shifts based on expertise. It’s dynamic and flexible.
Person Culture: Individual talents and autonomy are prioritized. Often seen in academic or professional environments.
2. Deal and Kennedy’s Corporate Culture Model:
Tough-Guy, Macho Culture: High-risk environments where feedback is immediate. Common in sectors like investment banking and advertising.
Work Hard, Play Hard Culture: Focuses on fun and action, with fast feedback. Common in sales-driven organizations.
Bet-Your-Company Culture: High-risk decisions with slow feedback, typical in industries like oil exploration or aerospace.
Process Culture: Low-risk and slow feedback. Bureaucratic and detail-oriented, often seen in large government agencies or traditional corporations.
3. Quinn and Cameron’s Competing Values Framework:
Clan Culture: Family-like, with a focus on mentoring, nurturing, and collaboration.
Adhocracy Culture: Dynamic and entrepreneurial, with a focus on innovation and risk-taking.
Market Culture: Results-oriented, with a focus on competition, achievement, and meeting targets.
Hierarchy Culture: Structured and controlled, with a focus on efficiency, stability, and doing things right.
4. Geert Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of National and Organizational Culture:
Power Distance: Degree to which less powerful members expect and accept power to be distributed unequally.
Uncertainty Avoidance: Degree to which people are uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.
Individualism vs. Collectivism: The balance between personal autonomy and group loyalty.
Masculinity vs. Femininity: Focus on competitiveness and achievement (masculine) vs. quality of life and nurturing (feminine).
Long-Term vs. Short-Term Orientation: Focus on future rewards (long-term) vs. tradition and the past (short-term).
Indulgence vs. Restraint: The extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses.
5. Schneider’s Culture Model (Four Cultures of Organization):
Collaboration Culture: People-focused, with an emphasis on working together and team spirit.
Control Culture: Hierarchical and structured, focusing on order, safety, and stability.
Cultivation Culture: Focused on personal development, growth, and learning.
Competence Culture: Performance-driven, with a focus on achieving and maintaining high standards of excellence.
6. Johnson and Scholes’ Cultural Web:
This model emphasizes how different elements (like symbols, rituals, routines, stories, power structures, and control systems) interact to create an overall cultural paradigm within an organization.
7. Edgar Schein’s Levels of Culture:
Schein identifies culture at three levels:
Artifacts: Visible organizational structures and processes.
Espoused Values: Strategies, goals, and philosophies explicitly stated by the organization.
Basic Assumptions: Deeply embedded, unconscious beliefs, and assumptions that are taken for granted.
Each of these models provides a different lens for understanding corporate culture and can help identify how organizations function internally, manage change, and influence employee behavior
8. Gallup’s Employee Engagement Survey:
This survey measures employee engagement through 12 core elements, known as the Q12. These elements include questions about clarity of expectations, recognition, opportunities for growth, and the degree to which employees feel connected to the company’s mission and purpose.
Cultural Readiness: High employee engagement often indicates a culture that is conducive to transformation, as engaged employees are more likely to embrace change, be innovative, and align with company goals. Low engagement scores, on the other hand, may highlight areas of cultural resistance or disengagement that need to be addressed for a successful transformation.
9. Denison Organizational Culture Survey:
This survey focuses on how organizational culture impacts business performance. It evaluates culture across four key traits: Mission, Consistency, Involvement, and Adaptability. These traits provide insights into how well an organization can respond to changes, adapt to new strategies, and engage employees in transformation efforts.
Cultural Readiness: A culture that scores high in adaptability and involvement is typically more ready for transformation, as employees are aligned with company goals, are engaged in decision-making, and can pivot easily when required.
10. Hofstede Insights Organizational Culture Scan:
This tool is based on Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions but adapted to assess organizational culture. It looks at the values driving behavior within the company and how these align with or resist digital and business transformations.
Cultural Readiness: Organizations scoring high on flexibility and innovation within this model may be more open to change and ready for transformation. Conversely, organizations with a high-power distance and resistance to uncertainty may require more change management efforts.
11. Leadership and Change Readiness Assessments:
These assessments evaluate leadership’s alignment with transformation initiatives, including their ability to communicate vision, empower teams, and lead through change. It’s essential for leadership to be aligned with cultural transformation for success.
Cultural Readiness: If leadership demonstrates a strong commitment to driving change and fostering a culture of innovation, the organization will be better positioned for transformation. A misaligned leadership culture can hinder transformation efforts.
12. SCARF Model (David Rock):
The SCARF model looks at five domains that influence human behavior in social situations: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. It’s particularly useful in understanding how employees react to change and transformation.
Cultural Readiness: Understanding how these factors play into employee engagement and resistance can help identify readiness and areas of concern when planning a transformation. For example, cultures where employees have low autonomy or experience uncertainty may resist change.
13. Kotter’s Cultural Change Assessment:
Based on John Kotter’s 8-step change model, this tool assesses an organization’s ability to manage and sustain cultural change. It evaluates factors such as urgency, coalition building, vision communication, and anchoring change within the corporate culture.
Cultural Readiness: This assessment can reveal whether the organization is culturally ready to undergo and sustain transformation, especially in how well change is communicated and embraced across different levels.
14. ADKAR Model (Prosci):
The ADKAR model focuses on five building blocks for successful change: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. It’s often used in change management to measure individual and organizational readiness for transformation.
Cultural Readiness: By assessing where employees fall in each stage of the model, organizations can gauge whether the culture supports or resists transformation efforts. High awareness and desire indicate readiness, while low scores in ability and reinforcement highlight areas to address.