Ventana software support forum

First, a reference to two articles: a "structural equation modeling"
research article and an attempt to model "inertia" (resistance to
change), then some thoughts on the subject.

You might check: Marcoulides, George A. and Ronald A. Heck,
"Organizational culture and performance: Proposing and testing a model,"
1993 (Vol. 4, No. 2, May), Organization Science, pp. 209-225.

Marcoulides and Heck propose a list of variables (warning: This
looks a lot like the "laundry list" method we SD folks disdain) that
may have causal relationships to each other and to organizational
performance; then they "test" the model by interviewing a sample
of 392 people (using linear programming methods, LISREL to test
statistical relationships.)

Also in the same issue of Organization Science -- Gresov, C., H.
Haveman, and T. Oliva, "Organizational design, inertia and the dynamics
of competitive response," pp. 181-208.

At least youll see an attempt to identify variables and that can be
useful.

My thoughts on what youre doing, in general:

1. I have been consulting in the areas of strategic thinking and
organizational change for nearly 20 years, working primarily with
Fortune 1000 companies. I believe that organizational culture has "the
last word" to say about organizational performance -- it is that
powerful. It is especially powerful when an organization tries to
change. Failure to deal explicitly with the culture dooms most change
efforts to failure (i.e., short-term annoyance but no long-term
improvement.)

2. Much of the literature about organizational culture is
pseudo-anthropological. That is, it attempts to draw static pictures of
culture as if the organization were no longer a living thing. I dont
care, in my work, about how prettily someone can dissect an organization
-- identifying tens or hundreds of "important" variables and factors
that, in some fashion not usually well described, "determine" or
categorize the culture. All that Im interested in is dynamic variables
-- what factors, when changed, result in long-term change in the
organization. Where do we push to make something happen? How can one
mobilize the energies and motivation of people to do things differently
in the face of natural resistance to any change? I dont want, nor do I
need, to "characterize" an organizations culture, nor to categorize it,
classify it, nor put it into some static taxonomy. I only want to know
how to make it change in goal-directed ways.

3. Therefore, I believe most of what you will find written about
organizational culture will be of little use (and, in fact, may be very
distracting) to your efforts to model it as a dynamic factor.

4. The Gresov et al. article, while overkilling their methodology
(catastrophe theory), at least attempts to look at dynamic variables.
They identify organizational design as the "splitting factor" which, by
reaching or not reaching a point of "singularity," determines whether
the organization will change or not. Organizational design is
conceptualized on a scale from flexible to inflexible (resistant to
change) based on such things as organizational structure, effectiveness
of the competitor intelligence system, technology, level of internal
stress, age and maturity of decision makers, etc. They try to predict
"intensity of competitive response" (i.e., how much change will occur)
from this "design" factor plus a "competitive pressure" construct.

5. I can recommend practitioner articles (with anecdotal support but no
research) that match my personal experiences in helping organizations
change, if that would be useful. I believe that there are only about
half a dozen critical "factors" to work on in order to make culture
change succeed. They arent as sophisticated as the factors cited in
the two articles above, but perhaps theyre more at the level you want
for you model. Please contact me if you want to discuss this further.

From: "Gunkler, John" <Jgunkler@satmansys.com>