Organizational Culture Inventory
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Organizational Culture Inventory
Introduction
The unit I selected to study is the Sales and Service department of the organization where I am employed, Verizon Telecommunications. It is the customer service department in which customers call in to order new service, add services or products to existing service, and report any questions, comments or complaints. In addition to placing orders for services, if a customer has a problem or a technical issue, my job is to analyze the problem or issue and recommend a solution. Notice however, the department title, Sales and Service. It is of no accident that the word Sales, is before Service. This is in fact a sales job. During every call, I must make sure I recommend a product or service to a customer. The problem is that management place a great deal of emphasis on the sales aspect of the job and not enough on the customer service aspect. Thus, creating a highly competitive cultural environment where good customer service skills and work ethics become questionable.
Current Culture
The OCI revealed that Competitive is the primary style, Perfectionistic is the secondary style and Approval is the weakest cultural styles of the unit. These results imply that the unit is continually in competition with each other or other offices of the same unit while striving to be perfect at achieving a sales goals and objectives. The unit that not only achieves its sales objectives but have also outperformed other units, are considered “winners.” Approval, being the weakest cultural style suggests that interpersonal relationships are not important in this unit.
Competitive is the obvious primary cultural style because this is a sales environment. Competition is steadily reinforced during the work day via various contests to reward either the top sellers of the day, or hour, or names being regularly announced of who are meeting their sales objectives for the day. In contrast, names are also sent via email of who are not meeting their objectives, or who have not sold a particular product in that day. Supervisors walk around encouraging more sales and giving prizes while the calls of under achievers are being observed, adding more pressure to an already high pressured work environment.
Approval being the weakest cultural style is not surprising. Interpersonal relationships are weak because everyone is more focused on making numbers than anything else. Being that is a call center environment, it is not easy to communicate with each other because phones calls are being taken one after the other. There is no time to focus on each other when there are sales quotas to be reached. This is why the behaviors associated with the approval style are not reinforced by the units current culture.
Targets for Cultural Change
TARGETS FOR CULTURAL CHANGE GRID
OCI Norms
Ideal Score
Current Score
CONSTRUCTIVE
Achievement
58(2nd greatest)
Self-Actualizing
Humanistic
Affiliative
PASSIVE DEFENSIVE
Approval
Conventional
Dependent
Avoidance
AGGRESSIVE DEFENSIVE
Oppositional
Power
Competitive
Perfectionistic
63(greatest)
Perfectionistic has the greatest Gap and therefore is a target for cultural change. In order to close the cultural gap, the unit should:
Discourage the belief throughout the unit that no matter what is done, it is never “good enough” to satisfy the expectations of management or superiors.
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