The Organizational Culture Audit: Countering Cultural Ambiguity in the Service Context

Abstract

Development of a compelling organizational culture continues to be an imperative for organizations seeking a competitive advantage. Identifying culture deficiencies or gaps is an important step in creating such a culture. For culture development efforts to be successful, leaders must first know the reality of the current organizational culture, however assessing the organizations’ true culture may be more compli- cated than it appears. Several theoretical frameworks illustrate how highly committed mangers may have difficulty in this regard. The following study links theory with application providing an action research based model of culture assessment. First, the rationale and conceptual model of cultural analysis is pro- vided based on past research. Next, a five-step model analyzing ten cultural areas is proposed, and rec- ommendations are provided for implementation.