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Organisational Culture

Research on over 900 New Zealand and Australian organisations shows that we still have a long way to go in our efforts to build cultures that can truly be described as high performing - and the reason lies with the current quality of leadership.

By Mike Gourley, Director, Human Synergistics

Our key finding is that too many organisations reinforce cultures which promote conflict, avoidance and people playing politics to gain influence.

Organisational culture is defined as the shared values, norms and expectations that govern the way people approach their work and interact with each other. In other words it's "what am I expected to do in order to fit in and get ahead here".

When a total of 9,432 senior executives in more than 900 organisations across New Zealand and Australia were asked to describe the culture they preferred to see in their organisations, the culture profile looked like this:

Diagram showing Preferred organisational culture as described by 9,432 executives across New Zealand and Australia as at January 2004

The dominant blue area indicates a preference for constructive cultures. The specific key behaviours identified were Achievement (set goals, pursue a standard of excellence), Self-Actualising (be creative, learn and grow), Humanistic-Encouraging (be supportive and helpful to one another) and Affiliative (build relationships with one another).

When 132,543 employees across those same organisations were asked to describe the way they perceived the actual culture in those organisations, the culture profile looked quite different:

Diagram showing Actual organisation culture as described by 132,543 employees across New Zealand and Australia as at January 2004

The dominant red and green areas indicate preferences for aggressive and defensive cultures. The specific key behaviours identified were Conventional (don't rock the boat, follow rules, make a good impression), Avoidance (shift responsibility to others, avoid blame), Oppositional (oppose ideas and be critical of others), Competitive (compete with co-workers rather than co-operate), Perfectionistic (work long hours to complete narrow objectives).

While some of these aggressive behaviours initially seem rather attractive - hard, tough, competitive, demanding, etc. - our latest research, based on intensive study of 75 target organisations over 3 years, shows in fact that these aggressive behaviours are not helpful. The key findings of our research are:

1. Organisations with Aggressive/Defensive cultures showed higher volatility in their sales and earnings results.
2. On the other hand, organisations with Constructive cultures showed significantly better results in terms of earnings/sales ratios.

For more information, review the following links:

1. About Human Synergistics
2. The Human Synergistics Circumplex
3. The Human Synergistics Integrated Development System
4. The Organisational Development Model - how structures, systems, technologies and skills/qualities affect organisational culture
5. The Organisational Culture Inventory (OCI) - measuring organisational culture and behaviour
6. The Organisational Effectiveness Inventory (OEI) - measuring the impact of structures, systems, technologies and skills/qualities
7. Our client experience