ABOUT OCAI
The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), developed by © Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn at the University of Michigan, is a validated research method to assess organizational culture.
Competing Values Framework
The OCAI is based on the Competing Values Framework was developed from research on the major indicators of effective organizational performance. It has been found to be an extremely useful model for organizing and understanding a wide variety of organizational and individual phenomena, including theories of organizational effectiveness, leadership competencies, organizational culture, organizational design, stages of life cycle development, organizational quality, leadership roles, financial strategy, information processing, and brain functioning. The robustness of the framework is one of its greatest strengths. In fact, the framework has been identified as one of the 40 most important frameworks in the history of business.
The OCAI
The OCAI (© Kim Cameron) was carefully designed, tested, and validated. Respondents are asked to score six aspects of culture:
Dominant characteristics
Organizational leadership
Management of employees
Organization glue
Strategic emphases
Criteria of success
For each aspect, they must divide 100 points over four statements. They assign the most points to the statement that is most true, and the least or none to the statement that doesn't fit with their organization.
The first round of scoring the six aspects yields a profile of the current culture. Quinn and Cameron found that most organizations have developed a dominant culture style. An organization rarely has only one culture type. Often, the culture profile is a mix of the four organizational culture types.
The second round focuses on the preferred organizational culture in the future. The gap between these two profiles shows the desire for and direction of change.
This way of scoring is deliberately designed. By dividing 100 points over four statements, respondents have to weigh and choose in the Competing Values Framework. In reality, you can't have everything maximized at the same time. A Likert-scale would allow people to give all statements a 1 or a 5 - while this way of weighing points is more realistic.
The six aspects are based on extensive research. Adding more variables does not enhance the survey's validity. Hence, the survey is short and sweet while it yields a valid representation of culture. (If you want to know more about validity and reliability, please see the book by Cameron & Quinn: Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture).
By averaging all OCAI profiles, we can calculate a collective team or organization profile to get an overview of current and preferred culture. It can be interesting to compare the culture profiles of departments, locations, levels, or professions within one organization.
In smaller teams, you could also compare the individual profiles.
An OCAI culture profile shows:
The dominant current culture
The discrepancy between present and preferred culture
The strength of the current culture
The strength of the preferred culture
The proposed change: in what direction?
People's current "pain" and any "gain" of change
The results report also shows the congruency of the six aspects. Cultural incongruence often leads to a desire to change, because different values and goals can take a lot of time and discussion. If the six culture aspects emphasize different values, people may be confused, frustrated, and conflicts could ensue.
OCAI use for organizations
The OCAI culture assessment provides:
Insight in the dominant culture of your organization
Your current focus on results, processes, people, and innovation
An indication of change-readiness by assessing the gap
A quick check before and after reorganization, change, acquisitions, or mergers
An idea of the preferred culture as a starting point for change
Awareness of culture as a crucial factor for organizational success
A validated measure of culture
Why do organizations invest in organizational culture? Culture influences organizational performance, innovation, agility, engagement, and competitiveness.
Kotter and Heskett found that effective culture can account for 20-30 percent of the differential in corporate performance when compared with “culturally unremarkable” competitors (James Heskett, The Culture Cycle, 2015).
Professor Kim Cameron showed that a positive climate, positive relationships, communication, and positive meaning lead to “positive deviance” or high performance.
Christine Porath and Christine Pearson did a study with 14,000 respondents and found that incivility demoralizes people. The estimated loss of productivity per year per employee is $ 14,000 on average.
Bill Sutton (Stanford University) has suggested that productivity could decrease by 40% when workers experience bullying.
Summarized: a toxic culture decreases productivity with 40%, rude cultures damage productivity with $14,000 per employee per year, while an effective culture increases productivity with 20%, and a positive culture boosts results by 30-40%
Culture is often the reason why 70 percent of all mergers, acquisitions and organizational change projects fail.
The powerful culture factor is not as “vague” as prejudice would have it. Culture is usually experienced as obvious: people are not aware of it. The OCAI helps people and organizations to become aware of current culture and to see what they could change to develop toward a successful future.
The four archetypes of culture are easy to understand and remember - it provides a shared reference for people to map typical behaviors, values, norms, outcomes.
The OCAI is a first check-in on culture and starting point for necessary changes.
The OCAI's advantages for diagnosing and changing culture:
It’s quick and focused: it measures the six culture aspects that matter
It's validated and renowned: you'll see your culture as it is
It’s involving: it's easy to include all associates if you want
It’s quantitative: clear current and preferred culture profiles to compare
It's easy to add qualitative details (typical behaviors, events, beliefs).
It’s manageable: you can do-it-yourself or hire one of our consultants to guide the process