From: Marshall Sashkin [mailto:
sashkin@gwu.edu]
Sent: 04 February 2001 18:23
To: s.levin
Subject: organizational culture surveys
There are a number of surveys that were reviewed in a book edited by Denise
Rousseau, several years ago, as well as in an article in Human Relations,
also
several years ago. I will send you by fast post copies of the article and a
chapter from the book, along with copies of my own culture materials.
I began with the Organizational Beliefs Questionnaire, originally based on
the
Peters & Waterman book (In Search of Excellence) and recently revised to
incorporate the key elements identified by Collins & Porras in their
best-selling business classic Built to Last. The OBQ is published in an
electronic version by HRD Press (Amherst, Massachusetts; see their website:
HRDPress.com). I also have a hard-copy version that I distrubute myself, a
self-scoring form for use in team assessment or executive seminar work. The
OBQ has been validated in several research studies. But the questionnaire I
use now is my Organizational Culture Assessment Questionnaire. The OCAQ, a
30-item questionnaire on optical scan forms, was developed long before the
Denison survey but is based on the same theoretical foundation, the
sociological Theory of Action developed by Talcott Parsons of Harvard. It
has
scales for each of the four crucial organizational functions -- Adapting,
Achieving Goals, Coordination, and Pattern Maintenance (Culture Strength),
along with a fifth scale, Customer Orientation, that is really a sub-area of
Achieving Goals. The OCAQ has been widely used in the US (in organizations
such as GE Capital and the US Air National Guard), and has been adapted for
schools and school disticts. It has been used in a wide range of research
studies. Our most recent, in the US Air National Guard, found significant
relationships between OCAQ scores and important performance measures (hard
measures, derived independently, such as accident rate). The OCAQ is also
significantly related to sales performance in retail and to executive
performance at the district level in Australia National Bank.
I will send you copies of all of the materials and reports mentioned above
and
hope that you find these of interest.
Sincerely,
Marshall Sashkin
Marshall Sashkin
Professor of Human Resource Development
Graduate School of Education and Human Development
The George Washington University
2134 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 994-8649 Fax: (202) 994-4928