The Impact of Varying Leader Culture Types on Organizational Change Initiatives
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Date
2018-05-05
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College of Public Affairs
Program
Doctor of Public Administration
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by the University of Baltimore for non-commercial research and educational purposes.
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by the University of Baltimore for non-commercial research and educational purposes.
Abstract
The nature of homeostatic organizations makes change difficult, yet organizations promote change to meet new visions, new goals and to address organizational deficiencies. Commonly used change management tools, known in this research as process change models, focus on the art of change, the steps needed to move people from one state to another and how to deal with the barriers between the former and desired states of change. It is within the change process that organizational and individual cultures are impacted. Process change models indicate the importance of and value of organizational culture, yet do not equip change agents with means to clearly identify organizational culture types prior to, during and after a change initiative.
Documented failure rates of change are high. Because of the high rate of change failure, the frequent use of process change models and the inability for process change models to identify culture types at the organizational or individual level, the aim of this study is to determine how closely aligned organizational culture types are among leader and staff roles. Different culture types in a single organization among functional groups with distinct mission can cause change disruption and reduce the likelihood of new behavior acceptance. When organizational leaders, change agents, and staff share culture types successful change is more likely.
To this end, this research addresses three questions: (1) How closely aligned are culture types, existing and preferred, of the Change Leader – each groups’ change agent with those of the Formal Leader, organizational leadership, and staff culture types within their functional group during a technology and process? (2) How aligned are culture types among Change Leaders – each groups’ change agent in a single organization? (3) How aligned are Change Leader culture types and change success?
The research questions are answered through a modified online Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) and semi-structured interviews. This research identifies that culture types among different organizational roles vary in each of the organization’s functional groups. The unknown differences in culture across the organizations can be a contributing factor to failed change.