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Organisational Culture Inventory

Identify your organisation's culture. Learn how to build a high performing culture that maximises the value of human talent and organisational structures, systems and technologies.

The Organisational Culture Inventory (OCI) provides a profile of an organisation's operating culture in terms of the behaviours that members believe are required to "fit in and meet expectations" within their organisation. It measures "how things are done around here".

Using the Human Synergistics Circumplex, the OCI measures behavioural norms and expectations, be they constructive, passive/defensive or aggressive/defensive.

The Organisational Culture Inventory (OCI) is the most widely used and thoroughly researched tool for measuring organisational culture in the world. 20 years of research into organisational culture, its causes and its outcomes allows Human Synergistics to clearly identify current culture, outcomes at the individual, group and organisational levels and the specific levers for change that must be addressed to change culture.

1. Moving from Measurement to Action: View the Organisational Development Model

Defining a Preferred Culture

A special version of the OCI is used to create a vision of the ideal or preferred culture for the organisation. Using this, leaders can define the culture that would best help their organisation achieve its vision and support long term effectiveness.

This preferred culture profile then becomes the standard against which the actual organisational culture is then compared, resulting in a gap analysis that focuses improvement efforts where they can make the most difference.

The preferred OCI also assesses the organisation's readiness for change and likely outcomes if the preferred culture were to be achieved.

Outcomes of Culture

When measuring actual operating culture, the OCI also measures certain key outcomes - individual member satisfaction, commitment, role clarity, role conflict and perceptions of the organisation's service quality.

Additional outcomes, plus levers for cultural change, can be measured by running the OCI in tandem with the Organisational Effectiveness Inventory (OEI).

The OCI can be used for:

• Evaluating the impact of organisational change efforts
• Providing direction for organisational change and development
• Assessing organisational adaptability
• Identifying and transferring the culture of high-performance units
• Enhancing system reliability and quality
• Facilitating mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances
• Enhancing managers' understanding of culture
• Facilitating strategic, structural and technological change
• Integrating differentiated organisational sub-units
• Managing diversity