Research Harrison, Quinn, Rohrbach

Harrison and Quinn select two dimensions for describing organisational cultures: internal versus external and control versus flexibility (the choice of these two axes is not discussed in any detail). Their interaction results in four cultures: family, adhocracy, market and hierarchical culture. Through a questionnaire you may plot the culture of a specific organisation. The ideas of Quinn and Rohrbach are quite comparable to those of Harrison and Quinn.

Cameron and Quinn have done an often-quoted research on organisational culture and on this basis designed a tool to visualise the organisational culture. Such an image remains a simplification of a complex reality. Moreover, their research reflects implicitly the American culture.

The instrument by Cameron and Quinn, the Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), measures culture by means of propositions which current and desired culture types are particularly significant for a company. They distinguish the family culture, the adhocracy culture, the hierarchical culture and the market culture.

This model also maps the leadership roles, the effectiveness criteria and the central management theories and to identify which has the best fits for the aforementioned four types of the dominant culture. The more these elements of an organisation are in line with each other, the more effective and successful the organisation is. The instrument also lends itself to changing the organisational culture.