The purpose of my research is to describe and analyze the facets of the learning culture in one non-profit organization. Based on my reading, I define a learning culture as: the observable and unobservable processes, structures, norms, and communication patterns that support ongoing, work-related, learning for employees. I relied on Schein’s (1985, 1992, 2004) levels of culture theory to guide my study. Schein posits that culture must be explored at three levels: “artifacts” (observable symbols and structures), “espoused beliefs and values” (the articulated ideologies of the organization), and “underlying assumptions” (the unconscious beliefs that are shared amongst members of a group). Accordingly, I selected a three-phase qualitative approach to provide a rich description of one organization’s learning culture. Using semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and document analysis, I investigated the firm’s learning culture. I targeted two groups: organizational representatives and employees. I further divided my employee group into two subgroups: administrators (management) and frontline employees (those who provide direct care for clients), in order to glean a broad perspective of the learning culture and how different groups perceive that culture. My research allowed me to describe the organization’s culture of learning. I uncovered a mismatch, however, between the organization’s espoused values regarding work-related learning and the employees’ perspectives on their learning. The organization articulates that it actively promotes and encourages learning for its employees; yet, the employees perceive their learning to be supported, but not readily encouraged. I tentatively conclude that perspectives on learning seem to be a function of employee role. This study offers some insight into the challenges of investigating an organization’s culture, both theoretically and methodologically. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-03-27 09:20:58.606

Objective – To determine the perceived impact of leadership development on the behaviours and competencies of employees and the organizational culture of the University Library, University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Methods – Using grounded theory methodology, the study was conducted in an academic library serving a mid-sized medical-doctoral university in western Canada. Twenty-one librarians and support staff who had completed the University Library’s Library Leadership Development Program (LLDP) participated in one-on-one interviews of 40-60 minutes duration. Interview transcripts were prepared by the researcher and reviewed by the participants. After editing, those source documents were analyzed to reveal patterns and common threads in the responses. The coding scheme that best fits the data includes the following four headings: skill development, learning opportunities, strategic change management, and shared understanding of organizational vision and values. Results – According to the responses in interviews given by graduates of the Library Leadership Development Program, the library’s investment in learning has created a cohort of employees who are: self-aware and engaged, committed to learning and able to develop new skills, appreciative of change and accepting of challenges, or accountable and committed to achieving the organization’s vision and values. Conclusion – Competencies and behaviours developed through exposure to leadership development learning opportunities are changing the nature of the organization’s culture to be more collaborative, flexible, open and accepting of change and challenge, supportive of learning, able to create and use knowledge, and focussed on achieving the organization’s vision and values. These are the characteristics commonly associated with a learning organization.

This research inestigates and examines the relationship between innovation success, internal organizational factors, local cultural factors and external environmental factors in the Malaysian ICT industry. From the responses of 122 local and multinational companies operating in Malaysia, the independent variables having positive relationships with innovation success are external ecconomic environmental factors and leadership organizational factors, while independent variables having negative relationships with innovation success are collectivism local cultures and external social environmental factors. The findings also indicate that these factors do not influence the innovation on an individual basis, but they are working in unison. / This study brings to the innovation field a more synthesized and holistic model on factors influencing innovation, and allows academics and practitioners such as managers, leaders and public policy makers to play a better role in fostering company's innovation success, particularly in developing countries like Malaysia. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2007.

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Peninsula Technikon, 2004. / Word processed copy. Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-77). Also available online.

Followers' perceptions of female leaders tend to be different from male leaders. For instance, the prototypes that correspond to female leaders tend to be more communal and transformational, whereas male leaders are associated with agentic and dominant leadership prototypes. Female leaders can be perceived with bias due to conflicts between the communal role expected of women and the agentic role traditionally expected of leaders. Additionally, collectivist or individualist nature of leaders' orientation, as well as organizational culture has the possibility of affecting followers' perceptions. Leader's orientations reflect either a collectivistic or individualistic personal style. Collective orientations indicate that the leader is group or team oriented, whereas an individual orientation signifies higher identification with the self and enhancing competition. Organizational cultures also theoretically have collectivistic or individualistic components. Leaders whose personal orientation (collectivist or individualist) matches the organizational culture (collectivistic or individualistic) are expected to be categorized as a leader more so than leaders whose personal orientation does not match the organizational culture. Female leaders, however, may be at a disadvantage in organizational cultures or with orientations that are incongruent with their gender roles. To examine these issues, scenarios were used in order to manipulate organizational culture and leader's orientations, and pictures were employed for leader gender manipulations. An online survey was distributed to a variety of business-related list serves, and 388 employees from U.S. based companies participated. Participants assessed the target leaders on perceptions of leader prototypicality, likability, and perceptions of mutual commitment and support. Results show that female leaders are perceived to be more transformational and less dominant than male leaders. Further, no differences between leaders were found on all dimensions of prototypicality and liking when examining the interaction between organizational culture, leader's orientation, and gender. There were main effects of leader's orientations on perceptions of mutual commitment and support with individualist leaders perceived as having lower perceptions of mutual commitment and support than collectivist leaders. Additionally, the three-way Leader Gender by Leader Orientation by Organizational Culture interaction on leader-member exchange showed that female leaders were penalized when they were embedded within individualistic organizational cultures or portrayed individual orientations. These penalties seem to be additive with female leaders depicting individual orientations within individualistic organizational cultures being rated even lower on perceptions of mutual commitment and support. This relationship was not found for male leaders; however male leaders were penalized for depicting individual orientations in collectivistic organizational cultures. An advantage was found for female leaders who depict collective orientations in collectivistic organizational cultures. These leaders were rated higher than male leaders in perceptions of mutual commitment and support, perhaps due to the congruence of the female gender role with the highly valued transformational leadership style. The implications of this study are that organizations should focus their culture on being more collectivistic, which could enhance perceptions of female leaders by their followers.

This study examines management and organizational models, specifically the Healthy Organization and High-Performing Workplace (HPW) models. Because a HPW can also be a Healthy Organization, the models are joined to create the Healthy High-Performing Workplace (HHPW) model. The experience of members within a particular organization, known herein as Company X, is examined. The study addresses the questions: does Company X display HHPW qualities? If Company X does display HHPW qualities, does it always exercise HHPW practices? Finally, what does this mean in terms of the workforce? Organizational culture theory is used to explain how expectations, norms, behaviours, and values are constructed and transmitted, and how organizational structures influence the environment and the employee experience. Data consists of interviews (n=12) and secondary sources. The findings support that Company X displays HHPW characteristics. However, when project deadlines are near or overdue and profit is at risk, certain HHPW practices are ignored.

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC), developed by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton in the early 1990s, is a powerful management tool for assisting an organization to focus on its strategy and establish and track performance against objectives in pursuit of that strategy. There have been many examples of successful implementations of the BSC. However, the literature indicates that the vast majority of BSC implementations fail. It is proposed that organizational culture is a mediating factor which contributes to success or failure in BSC implementations. Further, organizational learning, a driving force behind successful BSC implementations, is mediated by organizational culture as well. This dissertation reports on an empirical study to investigate the relationship between organizational culture and Balanced Scorecard effectiveness. This study involved collecting survey data from employees working in the various departments of a large County government organization. The survey instrument employed included a self-assessment for BSC effectiveness as well as an organizational culture assessment based on the Denison Organizational Culture Survey Instrument (OCSI). Organizational Learning was measured by the Organizational Learning index included in the OSCSI. The survey results show that each of the four organizational traits - Involvement, Consistency, Adaptability, and Mission - as measured by the Denison OCSI are significantly related to BSC effectiveness. Similarly, organizational learning, as measured by the Organizational Learning index, is significantly related to BSC effectiveness. Accordingly, it is concluded that an interrelationship among organizational culture, organizational learning, and BSC effectiveness exists.

Mergers and acquisitions remain a popular means of corporate growth but the role played by organizational culture remains poorly understood. Badly executed cultural integration is a leading cause of post-merger performance not meeting stakeholder expectations (Cartwright&Schoenberg, 2006). This paper reviews the literature on cultural integration in the context of mergers and acquisitions and provides insight into cultural assessment and integration.The study takes the form of exploratory research with findings from twelve semi-structured interviews collated and tested against five propositions that together build a reference point for cultural integration. Five cultural assessment tools are incorporated into a single view to provide the reader with a clear framework against which to assess organizational culture.The study validates the proposition that cultural integration plays a key role in post-merger performance and provides key elements towards a successful integration. The study goes on to find that cultural integration is necessary for post-merger performance, an integration plan should be built early in the pre-merger process, top management has an integral role to play in the post-merger integration of culture, large cultural differences can be an opportunity and that the level of learning and knowledge application in mergers and acquisitions is poor. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The master´s thesis deals with organizational culture and its effect on efficiency of HVM Plasma, s.r.o. Written inquiry, interview and documents kontent analysis were used to determine the present state of organization culture. The target was to design necessary steps which should provide areas of organizational culture.

Thesis advisor: Peter Krause / How do insurgent organizations form their strategies? Existing scholarship focuses on either strategic effectiveness or the exogenous conditions that produce specific strategies; there is significantly less work on how insurgents select between strategies or how those choices iterate into strategic change over time. The theory of insurgent organizational culture posits strategic preferences are produced by organizational culture. A significant body of scholarship analyzes the effect of organizational culture on state militaries and private businesses, but there has not yet been a systematic treatment of organizational culture’s effect on non-state militant organizations, i.e., insurgents. These organizations exist in a state of uncertainty, and their search for information is a powerful driving factor in the formation and evolution of their strategy. But there are a multitude of sources an organization can pull information from. Insurgent organizations differ in how they prioritize these different sources of information and how easily they are moved to change tact by new information; respectively, their embeddedness and reactivity. These two variable qualities comprise constitute insurgent organizational culture, which determines how insurgents convert information into strategy and strategic change. I use the Palestinian National Movement to develop this theory and weigh it against alternative explanations, comparing the organizational culture of Fatah, the PFLP, and Hamas. Analysis of primary sources and original interviews with key figures in Palestinian politics demonstrates these three organizations vary significantly in their organizational culture, leading to radically different approaches to strategy even under similar conditions and pursuing similar goals. Insurgent organizational culture theory shows that insurgent strategy is produced in an iterative process of rational updating rooted in organizational culture’s different prioritization of information and impetus for action under uncertainty; in so doing, it can explain variation in insurgent strategy more precisely than purely rationalist theories. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.