Organizational Culture: The Focus Questionnaire

This article describes two studies. The first study concerns the development of an internationally useful questionnaire for measuring organizational culture on the basis of Quinn's (l988) competing values model. The competing values model describes four cultural orientations. These are the support, innovation, rules, and goal orientation. The questionnaire is called FOCUS, and was developed by an international research group from 12 countries. The questionnaire consists of two parts: descriptive part (measuring organizational practices) and an evaluative part (measuring characteristics of the organization). The first study shows that seven of the eight scales meet psychometric criteria. The second study shows preliminary results regarding the influence of country and sector on organizational culture. Organizational culture is again divided into practices and values (characteristics). Sector and organization are expected to explain differences in organization are expected to explain differences in organizational practices, and country to explain differences in organizational values. The results indicate that on organizational level country influences both practices and values. Sector does not have a direct effect on practices and values. There is a sector-country interaction effect on practices and values. On the individual level organization influences both practices and values, whereas country only influences values. Sector has neither a direct nor an interaction effect on organizational culture.