Organizational Culture (Debra Woog McGinty and Nicole C. Moss)

For the Session Long Project for this Module, you are expected to explore some aspects of your organization's culture, at least as you see it. Since the concept of organizational culture is open to many interpretations and classifications, this assessment offers a slightly different approach from your background reading on organizational culture.

Required Reading

Debra Woog McGinty and Nicole C. Moss have compiled a short corporate culture survey aimed at identifying characteristics of workplaces. It is scored in pencil-and-paper fashion. The categories of workplace description that it generates are fairly self-explanatory.

Assignment

When you have completed the assessment think about it for a minute, and how it compares to the Academy, Baseball Team, Fortress, and Club cultures described by McNamara in the background reading. Then prepare a 2- to 3-page paper discussing:

• Your organization's scores on the McGinty/Moss assessment and whether the results fit your general expectation or constitute a surprise in some ways.
• Your assessment of your organizations culture "type" according to McNamara's categories.
• The degree to which these two assessments seem to be telling you similar or dissimilar things about your organization.
• Anything that you can infer from these assessments about how your organizational culture fits or doesn't fit with you, and what (if anything) you might be able to do to make your interaction with the culture more effective. Be as specific as you can in the interests of getting the most value from the exercise for yourself.
• Your overall opinion of these typologies as a means of understanding the organization and how you cope with it - what they measure well and anything that you believe they do not measure well or at all.

Your paper should be short (2-3 pages, not including cover sheet—references not generally required) and to the point. You are expected to deal with these issues in an integrated fashion, rather than treating them as a series of individual questions.

Keys to the Assignment

• Your completion of all the steps in the exercise.
• Your inclusion of the actual instrument or results.
• Your understanding of both approaches to culture "types," both in terms of similarities and differences.
• Your ability to interpret the results of the assessment in terms of your own experience, either to confirm or to question the results.
• Your ability to derive from the exercise ideas about improving your managerial understanding and/or skills.
• The clarity and quality of your writing.

Assignment Expectations

Your paper will be evaluated on the following points:

• Precision - Does the paper address the question(s) or task(s)?
• Breadth - Is the full breadth of the subject, i.e., the Keys to the Assignment, addressed?
• Depth - Does the paper address the topic in sufficient depth and include the background readings and other background resources as references?
• Critical thinking - Is the subject thought about critically, i.e., accurately, logically, relevantly, and precisely?
• Clarity - Is the writing clear and are the concepts articulated properly? Are paraphrasing and synthesis of concepts the primary means of responding to the questions or are points conveyed through excessive use of quotations?
• Organization - Is the paper well written? Are the grammar, spelling, and vocabulary appropriate for graduate-level work? Are headings included in all papers longer than two pages?
• Referencing (citations and references) - Does the paper include citations and quotation marks where appropriate? Are the references from the background readings and assignment present and properly cited? Are all the references listed in the bibliography present and referred to via citation?
• Application - Are the concepts of the module appropriately applied to the subject?

Tips and Suggestions

Please note the following tips and suggestions:

• Include a cover page and reference page in addition to the 2–3 pages of analysis described above.
• Include headings for all papers longer than two pages (basically all papers), but do not use headings as "space fillers."
• Cite and reference all sources that you use in your work, including those that you do not quote but paraphrase. This means include citations and quotation marks for direct quotes of more than five words, and include citations for information that you have "borrowed" or paraphrased from other sources.