An investigation into organisational culture permeation and its impact on traits for improved organisation performance
Fragmented or negative organisational culture can have detrimental effects on morale, turnover, and overall performance. Research suggests that organisational culture plays a crucial role in enabling or hindering an organisation's ability to perform at its best and achieve strategic objectives (Ogbonna and Harris, 2000). When attempting to measure organisational culture, most survey instruments focus on treating the entire organisation as the unit of analysis. This approach is problematic as it overlooks the importance of organisational culture permeation between hierarchical levels and fails to capture the interactions that occur between the levels. To attain a more comprehensive measure and better understanding of organisational culture, it is necessary to adopt a lower level of analysis and consider the permeation of organisational culture between all levels of the organisation. When leaders establish a strong and positive culture throughout it fosters a consistent and cohesive environment (Iqbal, Guohao and Akhtar, 2017). This not only increases engagement, productivity, and overall job satisfaction it also helps to attract and retain top talent, all of which can serve as a competitive advantage and positively influence company performance (Albrecht et al., 2015). Using a mixed methods approach and adopting the Denison Organisational Culture Survey (DOCS) instrument as a framework, this thesis measures the permeation of organisational culture through several hierarchical levels, something not typically achieved by the traditional organisational culture surveys and instruments. Three different-sized diverse UK-based organisations were analysed to provide a comprehensive understanding of potential blockages and gaps that can potentially impact company performance. The researcher’s original contribution to knowledge is the measurement of organisational culture permeation between the hierarchical levels by adopting a rigorous abductive mixed methods approach rarely achieved in practice or academia, thus contributing to the organisational cultural discourse. The study found an association between leadership clarity in defining organisational culture and the implementation of a cohesive plan to ensure its permeation between all hierarchical levels. The findings also indicate that organisational size influences workers' interpretation of espoused values. Overall, the research supports the notion that effective organisational culture permeation throughout all hierarchical levels strengthens traits associated with improved effectiveness and performance.
culture, permeation, performance, values, impact, measurement, vision, consistency, behaviours, leadership
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