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The purpose of this paper is to investigate if a firm’s organizational culture affects the set of quality techniques it uses, and if these quality techniques affect the relationship between organizational culture and operational performance.

Based on data collected from 250 firms in Brazil and Denmark, structural equation modeling is used to investigate the relationship between organizational culture and the use of quality techniques, and its impact on operational performance. Four quality technique groups, four cultural profiles adopted from the Competing Values Framework and a set of operational performance indicators are used to operationalize the study.

Culture does not appear to be an unequivocal predictor of the use of quality techniques. Furthermore, while most quality technique groups contribute indirectly to the total effect on operational performance in the developmental, group and hierarchical cultures, the performance effects are insignificant for all four groups in the rational culture.

Managers need to be actively aware of the cultural characteristics of their organization before adopting quality techniques, in order to benefit most from the use of these techniques.

Most previous studies address the relationships between culture, quality management and performance at the level of quality practices. This study takes the unitarist-pluralist discussion to the level of quality techniques and extends that discussion to what should be its core, namely, the influence of quality techniques on the performance impact of culture.

A range of organizational culture scales have been developed and applied in various industries. However, the measurement of organizational culture is noticeably different according to industry. Measuring organizational culture, specifically as it relates to the hospitality industry, is also a research area that has remained relatively unexplored. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss some essential problems and gaps existing in the previous studies. This chapter also presents a new scale entitled the “hospitality industry organization culture scale” that applies specifically to the hospitality context, and contributes to our understanding of organizational culture within this context. A multidisciplinary and mixed-method research approaches were followed in order to develop a new organizational culture scale for the hospitality industry. The findings suggest that the hospitality industry has unique cultural characteristics that are distinguished from similar industries.

The competing values model (CVM) describes organizational culture in terms of what appear to be mutually exclusive value dimensions: structural control vs. flexibility, focus on internal vs. external stakeholders, and means vs. ends. The apparent paradox in simultaneously expressing competing values has implications for a variety of organizational phenomena, including leadership, decision making, and strategic management. The CVM thus offers promise for providing a common metric for multi‐level, trans‐organizational, and cross‐cultural analyses. To date, however, underlying assumptions regarding the competing values framework as a characterization of culture have not been fully validated. This research provides a test of the competing values model with methodology that is conceptually consonant with the paradoxical nature of the theory. Using a sample drawn from 10 U.S. organizations, a Qsort and multidimensional scaling analysis produce qualified support for a structure of organizational cultural values consistent with the CVM. Further, this study elaborates the CVM by suggesting a mechanism whereby the apparent paradox of competing values might be more effectively managed.

This paper seeks to examine how values comprising organizational culture impact on employees' job satisfaction, taking also into account their gender and age.

The study took place in all three public hospitals located in a major Greek city, where 125 usable questionnaires were gathered. The measures adopted include the Organizational Culture Profile and the Job Descriptive Index. The statistical analyses include descriptive statistics, stepwise regression analyses, and t‐tests.

Findings suggest that employees recognize certain cultural traits as job satisfaction amplifiers. These are fairness, opportunities for personal growth, enthusiasm for the job and good reputation. On the other hand, another cultural trait, that is aggressiveness, seems to confine job satisfaction. Going a step further, it appears that employee gender and age influence the way that the organizational values affect their job satisfaction. This influence is in accordance with gender and age profiles identified by literature.

Employers can incorporate these findings by shaping organizational culture in such a way as to enhance the overall level of job satisfaction of their employees, making them more willing to remain and build their career within the organization. This way, the organization can minimize the chances of losing talented individuals and is thus more likely to create a competitive advantage.

These findings help in creating a better understanding of job satisfaction and delineating its relationship with organizational culture.

Existing literature on organizational culture focuses on the strategic fit between a firm's culture values and its technology and task environment. This study, however, emphasizes the diffusion perspective of organizational culture, that organizations often imitate cultures of successful firms to reduce uncertainty, resulting in a homogeneous set of organizational culture values that are considered universally beneficial to organizational functioning. Culture values falling into this category include modern values that emphasize innovation, risk-taking, and change, as opposed to more traditional values that focus on stability and consistency. Using 1958 employees from 50 firms in Taiwan and Mainland China, we developed an organizational culture measure consisting of both modern and traditional organizational culture values. We showed that modern organizational culture values were considered beneficial even by employees with traditional personal values.

Reports an exploratory investigation of the organizational cultural values supporting and inhibiting certification to the ISO 9000 series of quality standards. As more firms pursue certification to ISO 9000 based quality system standards, the hypothesis emerges of a common cultural profile to support successful certification. This hypothesis was investigated by asking management representatives of firms currently registered to the ISO 9000 standards to evaluate the roles of specific organizational values in their successfully registered firms. A modified version of an existing culture measurement procedure was used to measure culture. Factor analysis identified factors working towards and against attainment of ISO 9000 certification. The results of this study suggest organizations seeking ISO 9000 certification should be decisive, team‐oriented, risk‐averse, and should value stability, pay attention to detail, value high levels of organization and value working in a co‐operative environment with good interpersonal relationships. Offers suggestions for extending this research beyond the current study.

Like all other human behaviors, creativity must be examined by considering both personal and situational influences. “Person-organization fit” (POF) provides a suitable theoretical perspective to investigate the congruence between persons and organizations in the domain of creativity. However, few studies have examined the effects of POF on creative behavior. Although the majority of these studies have identified a positive relationship between POF and creativity, it is suggested that congruent individuals are less likely to be inventive. The current study will examine the positive relationship between POF and employees' self-rated creativity in the Turkish context. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Subjective POF measures and a creativity measure were adapted for this research, and multiple regression was used to calculate whether and how POF relates to creativity.

Two important conclusions were found from the analyses. One of these significant interaction effects was found on employee creativity. And the second is congruence between personal values and current organizational values would effect employee creativity positively. Detailed findings and contributions have been discussed.

Although providing an important contribution to POF and creativity literature, this study had some limitations. In this study, self-rating method has been used to measure employee creativity. However, supervisor rating is the most common way in field studies and gives more objective results than self-rating method.

The findings provide valuable information for human resource practitioner about the importance of situational factors as far as personal characteristics for enhancing creative behavior in organizations.

As far as it is known, there are few studies to examine the relationship between POF and creativity empirically. The majority of these researches examined the complementary fit (demand-abilities, need-supply, value-supply fit). On the other hand, this study specially has focused on supplementary fit (POF), rather than complementary fit and examined its relationship with employee creativity by considering a wide set of values in the Turkish context.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an imprinting perspective of the organizational culture evolution at a large state-owned heavy equipment manufacturer. It aims at exploring sensitive periods and the tension between persistence and decay of imprints.

It employs the case study approach. Both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (survey) data were collected, from the directors, middle managements, and grass-roots staffs of Dong Fang Turbine Co. Ltd. Based on the set of four scenarios, both within-scenario analysis and cross-scenario analysis were conducted following the “replication logic.”

New survival threats are more possible to develop sensitive periods with new imprints than transition periods, and the authors suggest organizational culture can be divided into two categories as the institutional sensitive and the local community sensitive.

This study is not only an exploitation of imprinting theories, but also provides a different understanding of organizational evolution, especially in terms of imprints dynamic. Meanwhile, the case shows how institutional environment and local community has shaped differently the organizational culture.

The executives, just below the chief executive officers represent an important but rarely investigated senior executives. The purpose of this paper is to investigate their need for social acceptance and the impact of culture on the perceived use of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors.

A cross-sectional, multi-instrument design was used to investigate 439 Australian executives at the apex of their organization.

The results suggest that these executives identified a prominent need to self-deceive themselves when assessing their perceived use of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors. In addition, the cultural dimensions, such as supportiveness and performance orientation, were identified as influencing specific leadership behaviors, in order to produce competitive advantages. However, the cultural dimension of emphasis on rewards uniquely decreased the perceived use of several leadership behaviors (i.e. articulates vision, fosters the acceptance of group goals, and provides an appropriate role model).

The study provides further evidence of how the social context impacts on leadership behaviors and thinking

The development of executive requires insights into how their personal need for social acceptance and culture alter their use of leadership.

Social desirability and specific culture dimensions do not uniformly influence the perceived use of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors.

Past research on group diversity tends to overlook organizational contextual and group process variables. Although recent studies have revealed the main effects of group diversity on intra‐group conflict, it is important to examine the contextual factors reducing or facilitating those effects on intra‐group conflict. This paper presents a conceptual analysis and research proposals that build on past research on intra‐group conflict and organizational culture to examine the relationships between organizational culture, intra‐group conflict, and group diversity. The paper proposes that organizational cultural intensity and content have direct impact on intra‐group conflict and moderate the relationship between group diversity and intra‐group conflict, depending on the degree of value congruence and the value content shared among group members.