Organisational culture: Concept, context, and measurement

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, 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

Origins and Popularisation of the Concept of Organisational Culture; Current Conceptual Treatments; Concepts Related to Organisational Culture: Organisational Climate and Social Representations; A Framework for Contextualising Culture; Measuring Organisational Culture and Penetrating Context; A Study of Organisational Culture Using the Contextual Framework; Refining the Analysis of Organisational Attributions; Directions for Future Research; A Map for the Field