ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
A Contextual Analysis
by Elizabeth Kummerow (The University of Adelaide, Australia)
&
Neil Kirby (The University of Adelaide, Australia)
In 1989, the well-known organisational culture scholar, Stephen Ott, lamented what he saw as the failure of the organisational culture perspective to have the kind of lasting influence — whether empirical, or in terms of its contribution to practice — that had been hoped for. In attempting to explain this state of affairs, Ott observed that, “Some of the most important unanswered questions are methodological, and without methodological advancement, the perspective will not achieve maturity.” Some two decades on, and the question of how best to decipher or measure an organisation's culture is today no less of a challenge for researchers and practitioners than it was when Ott first wrote about it.
This book is an important step toward breaking this methodological impasse. Based on the findings of many years of research, it examines what would be required to develop a measure for organisational culture that is practically useful and also capable of accessing culture at its deepest, and arguably most important yet most elusive, level. It is an essential read for both scholars and practitioners seeking to go beyond easy answers and “quick fix” solutions to the methodological complexities of studying and working with organisational culture.
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