Previously we have mentioned the organizational culture inventory.
The OCI is the world's most thoroughly researched
and widely used culture assessment for measuring organizational culture.
The OCI goes beyond corporate culture, company culture and workplace culture,
as a cultural dimension or as the cultural dimensions, its measures
apply to all type of organizations.
The question is, how does this work?
There are two forms of OCI available for culture assessment.
The first is the standard OCI that measures the current culture
of an organization in terms of shared behavior or norms.
That is, the behaviors that members belief they are required to fit in
and meet the expectations.
The second is based on members responses that are combined and profiled
on Human Synergistics Circumplex.
Like the one we see here.
Then we can show the relative strength of constructive, passive-defensive
or aggressive defensive norms
within the organization.
The OCI ideal complements the current form of the OCI
by identifying the optimal or preferred culture
for the organization.
It assesses the behaviors that leaders and other members belief
should be expected to maximize effectiveness
and enable the organization
to reach its goals.
The result is a picture of the ideal culture
based on the shared values and beliefs.
Let's say a benchmark against which the current culture can be compared
in order to identify gaps and targets for change.
As I have said before, we can divide these circumplex
in different relative extremes or fields.
We would have or we can say that we can have constructive culture
passive-defensive culture and aggressive-defensive culture.
The constructive culture is going to be a balance
between orientation to the task
and the promotion of good interpersonal relationships
between all the workers.
People are encouraged to work together, team work.
The passive-defensive culture
encourages people to act on a defensive way.
It's going to be promoting submission to procedures and guidelines.
And finally, aggressive-defensive culture. Guidance to the task
with emphasis on the own needs.
It's decision making based on status.
Like perfectionism.
Now let's see the circumplex.
We can say that this is the organizational culture inventory.
With different culture approaches.
We are going to have this and we are going to divide it
in different categories, like self-actualizing, affiliative,
approval, that means when somebody is looking for approval,
somebody that is conventional, dependant on guidelines,
avoidances, someone that opposes to everything,
somebody that base everything on power,
competitive, etcetera.
We can say that organizational culture can be focused
on what is considered high order needs
people orientation, lower order needs
and task orientation needs.
As you can imagine, the ideal is to have high order needs
and try to avoid the low order needs.
Also, as I have said before, we can divide this
in three different styles or categories.
The constructive styles, the passive-defensive styles
and the aggressive-defensive styles.
If we look at the constructive styles, we are going to have
a combination of people oriented to skills.
And all the passive-defensive are going to be more regarding
people who are submissive.
We can say that people orientation will have a combination of
constructive styles and passive-defensive styles.
Also that orientation is going to be mainly
based on aggrsesive-defensive styles.
Also it can be divided in quadrants.
In general those quadrants are a combination
of the three different styles.
So, clockwise, the first quadrant is a combination of high order needs
and people orientation, as I have said.
It pursues excellence though learning, coaching, participation and teamwork.
The second one, the passive, focus on tasks and people
in order to protect status and maintain personal safety.
Basically we fear conditions performance.
The third quadrant is task oriented.
Mainly, tasks are performed with the approach of protecting status.
Motivation is based on fear.
And finally, the forth quadrant pursues excellence
through individual contribution, learning and competition.
As we can imagine, a healthy environment
will have a combination of all of them,
always trying to tend to higher order needs.
So, we'll try to work on teamwork, but also we'll promote
excellence through individual contribution.
Here we can see two different examples.
On the left we have a circumplex
that is considered beneficial for safety.
It's really proactive, and it is the ideal culture
for a nuclear power plant.
On the other hand, on the right, we have the real circumplex
for the nuclear industry.
In general, it has been for years passive-defensive.
Nuclear workers are always afraid of something
because they are told to work under procedures, guidelines and orders.
The idea is to move from the right to the left
in order to improve safety.