The relationship between organizational culture and the performance of a technology startup: A Fuzzy Cognitive Maps based analysis

Abstract

New organizations, such as startups, are more exposed to failure due to their vulnerability when arriving the market. Therefore, monitoring and managing performance indicators becomes essential, since they enable the achievement of strategic objectives. However, this process is impacted by the organizational culture, which guides the company’s behavioral patterns. Therefore, this paper proposes the use of fuzzy cognitive maps to quantify the causal relations between Hofstede's cultural dimensions and the performance of a technology startup. The employed methodology is composed of three stages: literature review, computational model development and conduction of an illustrative application. It is classified as quantitative, axiomatic and normative, since it proposes a model from the identified gaps and the opinions of specialists, suggesting an approach that integrates the research concepts. The results indicate that the time for development is the most impacted indicator by culture. It can be concluded, therefore, that it was possible to consider the inherent subjectivity to the evaluation of the causal relations between culture and performance by applying the fuzzy cognitive map. Hence, action plans can be proposed to foster improvement initiatives that promote the culture-performance alignment.