4 Types of Organizational Culture

The Tipster brings you big ideas in small bites.

4orgculture

Our weekly feature, The Tipster, brings you easy-to-digest tips on topics that matter to your innovative work, such as: the roles of individuals on teams, how to give good feedback, different kinds of group decision-making processes, and the different modes of engaging with the arts.

To learn more about innovation in action, check out our Innovation Stories section and monthly series exploring the question: How do organizations stay continuously adaptive?

This Week: What are 4 types of organizational culture?

According to Robert E. Quinn and Kim S. Cameron at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, there are four types of organizational culture: Clan, Adhocracy, Market, and Hierarchy.

  • Clan oriented cultures are family-like, with a focus on mentoring, nurturing, and “doing things together.”
  • Adhocracy oriented cultures are dynamic and entrepreneurial, with a focus on risk-taking, innovation, and “doing things first.”
  • Market oriented cultures are results oriented, with a focus on competition, achievement, and “getting the job done.”
  • Hierarchy oriented cultures are structured and controlled, with a focus on efficiency, stability and “doing things right.”

There’s no correct organizational culture for an arts organization. All cultures promote some forms of behavior, and inhibit others. Some are well suited to rapid and repeated change, others to slow incremental development of the institution.

For example, Quinn and Cameron associate the lower two cultures (Hierarchy and Market) with a principal focus on stability and the upper two (Clan and Adhocracy) with flexibility and adaptability. A Hierarchy culture based on control will lead mainly to incremental change, while a focus on Adhocracy will more typically lead to breakthrough change.

The right culture will be one that closely fits the direction and strategy of a particular organization as it confronts its own issues and the challenges of a particular time.

What culture do you want for your organization and how might you move towards it in the future?

Looking for more inspiration?

We also encourage you to explore our Innovation Stories collection, which shares narratives from organizations that are daring to do things differently in order to adapt to their rapidly shifting environment.

Interested in pursuing adaptive change work at your own organization? We encourage you to check out some of the service offerings from EmcArts, the nonprofit service provider behind ArtsFwd.

About
WordPress › Error

There has been a critical error on this website.

Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.