MHRM 6801 Week 8 Competing Values Culture Analysis Example

Same Estimate Problem, Different Claims: Whether Culture Explains What Structure Leaves Over at Bellamy, Read Through the Competing Values Framework, and the Observation That Would Prove the Reading Wrong

Student Name

Walden University

MHRM 6801: Organizational Effectiveness and Leadership

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Same Estimate Problem, Different Claims: Whether Culture Explains What Structure Leaves Over at Bellamy, Read Through the Competing Values Framework, and the Observation That Would Prove the Reading Wrong

The Leftover Difference

Last week's argument showed that damage claims at Bellamy follow the gap between estimated and loaded volume. That explanation leaves something over. Colorado Springs, an older depot, and Aurora, a newer one, face the estimate problem at almost the same rate: loads ran more than 15 percent over the estimate on 21 percent of Colorado Springs moves and 23 percent of Aurora moves. Yet on those large-gap moves, Colorado Springs had a claims rate of 12 percent and Aurora 20 percent. Crew tenure explains part of the difference. This paper asks whether culture explains the rest.

The Framework

Cameron and Quinn (2011) describe organizational culture along two dimensions, flexibility against stability and internal against external focus, which produce four types: clan cultures prize collaboration and loyalty, adhocracies prize innovation, market cultures prize winning and measurable results, and hierarchies prize procedure and predictability. Their assessment instrument asks members to divide 100 points among statements describing each type. Hartnell et al. (2011), combining many studies, found that clan cultures were most strongly associated with employee attitudes and market cultures with some measures of financial performance, supporting the framework's claim that the types emphasize different outcomes.

What the Assessment Found

The older depots lean toward clan culture and the newer ones toward market culture. Interviews fit the scores. At Colorado Springs, crew chiefs described calling another chief when a load is larger than expected, and a second crew often arrives within two hours, borrowed informally. At Aurora, crew chiefs described being judged by moves completed per day, which the depot posts on a board, and said asking for help "looks like you can't handle your job."

Table 1

Culture Profile Scores by Depot Group, Current

Composite organization. 84 crew members and supervisors at older depots and 41 at newer depots completed the assessment in English or Spanish.

How Culture Could Explain the Leftover Difference

On a large-gap move, the crew faces a choice: load everything faster and tighter on one truck or get help. In a clan culture, asking for help is normal and colleagues expect to give it. In a market culture where speed is measured and help-seeking signals weakness, crews push through. Pushing through an oversized load is when furniture gets damaged. Schein (2010) argues that culture shows most clearly in what people do when the formal rules do not tell them, and Bellamy's process has no rule for an oversized load.

What the Clan Culture Costs

The cultural reading should not be taken as praise for the older depots alone. Their clan orientation has costs the interviews also revealed. Informal borrowing of crews leaves the lending crew's own job short, and Denver's dispatch sheets show several afternoon moves starting late on days when a crew left to help elsewhere. Newcomers at the older depots described taking months to be included in the network of chiefs who call each other, which may be one reason transfers between depot types are rare. A market orientation, meanwhile, has given Aurora and Fort Collins faster growth, which the owners value. Cameron and Quinn (2011) note that effective organizations usually need some of every culture type, and that the question is balance rather than choosing one. For Bellamy, the useful lesson is narrower: on an oversized load, the habit of asking for help protects furniture, and a depot can build that habit into its process without giving up the rest of its culture.

The Observation That Would Prove This Wrong

If the cultural reading is right, crews who move between depot types should take on the help-seeking habits of their new depot. Three Aurora crew members transferred to Colorado Springs last spring. If, on large-gap moves at their new depot, their claims rate has stayed near Aurora's 20 percent rather than falling toward Colorado Springs' 12 percent, the difference is about the people, not the culture, and this reading is wrong. The transfer records are small but available, and they should be checked before the reading is relied on.

Limits

Culture scores came from a single survey, and the newer depots' smaller numbers make their profile less certain. The posted productivity board may be a structural feature rather than a cultural one; separating the two will matter when changes are designed.

References

Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Hartnell, C. A., Ou, A. Y., & Kinicki, A. (2011). Organizational culture and organizational effectiveness: A meta-analytic investigation of the competing values framework's theoretical suppositions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 677-694. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021987

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.