Organizational culture effects on individual control and interpretation across company levels

TUIU Denison

Why the Denison Model of Culture is Right for TUIU

There are many different models of organizational and corporate culture that have been developed and described by various theorists and business practitioners, and it can be difficult to determine which model -- if any -- is best suited to the analytical and diagnostic needs of a given organization, or if indeed one model is simply superior in terms of its accuracy and detail than another. These questions can be highly important for businesses, especially during periods of change, because an understanding of culture and how it operates can facilitate efficient means of adjusting values, perceptions and missions within the business context. For entities that are somewhat less profit-driven but still highly dependent on a shared organizational culture in order to succeed in their endeavors, such as modern universities, the issue of culture and cultural change can be even more important than in profit-driven enterprises.

This partially explains why a conscious awareness and evaluation of organizational culture has become so important at TUIU, now Trident University International. In a time of global change, when higher education is ore diverse and more competitive than ever, an accurate understanding of how culture operates at the university and how it can be utilized to lead to more effective administrative and educational practices is necessary. This would potentially enable the school to provide more support for students and provide more satisfaction to faculty, and generally become a more effective and better institution of higher learning. This paper will examine several models of culture, determining why the Denison model was selected for TUIU.

Competing Theories

Allan Kennedy, who co-authored the book Corporate Cultures in the 1980s, insists in attempting to explain his theory on culture -- one of the first to be fully codified and explained in book format -- that culture is only one part of management, and that in fact there are many different issues a company has to deal with that have nothing to do with culture (Richman 1999). While what Kennedy says is understandable and has a certain pragmatic ring of truth, his comments and the limitations they impose on the efficacy and utility of culture can also be seen as subjective statements indicative of a certain culturally dismissive perspective. Simply realigning perspectives to insists that all decisions ultimately affect and reflect cultural values does not make Kennedy's statements incorrect, but it does show how even what Kennedy terms non-cultural "strategic" matters can be influenced by culture (Richman 1999).

An examination of the actual model that Kennedy and his co-author Terrence Deal developed reveals how easily it can be used to explain or adjust to strategic business choices. The model consists of a chart combining risk (marked as either low or high) and feedback and reward (marked as rapid or slow). The four resulting quadrants -- low-rapid, low-slow, high-rapid, high-slow -- correspond to four distinct cultures (Changing Minds N.D.). Businesses grow or die based on how they deal with risk, and motivation and accuracy are entirely matters of feedback and reward, so it is difficult to see how to divorce culture from strategy at all -- this model is perhaps too simplistic to account for all nuances of strategy, but it is embedded in the cultural delineations.

The Competing Values Framework presents an entirely different understanding of culture, and its increased complexity as well as the essential standpoint that culture is foundational to other organizational elements makes it already a more desirable system than Kennedy and Deal's. This does not mean that this model is right for TUIU, however, and in fact this framework is not the perfect tool for TUIU or any university. In this framework, culture is broken into four primary constituent parts -- clan, hierarchy, adhocracy, and market -- and the different combinations with which these elements are emphasized within the organization typifies the type of culture and cultural focus that exists in the organization (Changing Minds N.D.). This allows for a much great degree of nuance, as variation in emphasis make this framework more fluid than Kennedy and Deal's rigid structure, yet this model still relies too heavily on a single element of the organization -- namely the view towards structure and authority -- to be full effective (Changing Minds N.D.).

The Denison Culture Model

The Denison Culture Model is both more complex than the previous two models of culture and more fluid than both, examining multiple areas of perception and values in order to derive its cultural definitions (Denison N.D.). This model is similar to the Competing Values Framework in its identification of four key areas -- mission, consistency, involvement, and adaptability -- and the determination of culture based on different emphases on these areas by members of the organization (Denison N.D.). This is where the similarity ends, however.