Managing the Organization's Structure

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.

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.

Essay Sample:

The McGinty/Moss assessment revealed interesting results about my organization which were not surprising to me. I have always assumed my organization had a very traditional type of culture as it has a hierarchical structure where employees report to their immediate superiors. For questions 1-5, I answered "true" on all of the answers, which is very telling of my organization. According to the authors' assessment, this type of environment has various advantages including a very formal format which allows individuals to "consider issues carefully prior to making a change" (Par. 3). Another