The competing values framework

In plain terms

Organizations want contradictory things. They want stability and room to adapt, a close-knit internal culture and a sharp eye on customers and competitors. The competing values framework turns that tension into a map.

Its claim is that these values cannot all be maximized at once. A culture that prizes control will feel different from one that prizes flexibility, and a culture focused inward on its people will feel different from one focused outward on the market. Naming where an organization sits, and where its people want it to sit, is the framework's main use.

Where it came from

1983: a map of effectiveness. Robert Quinn and John Rohrbaugh did not start by studying organizations. They asked panels of organizational theorists and researchers to judge how similar commonly used effectiveness criteria were, in a two-stage study in which the second panel closely replicated the first (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983). Three value dimensions emerged: control versus flexibility, internal versus external focus, and means versus ends. Placed against each other, they form a spatial model, which the authors offered as a framework for organizational assessment. An earlier paper by the same authors appeared in Public Productivity Review in 1981 (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1981).

1999: a model of culture. Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, both then at the University of Michigan's business school, used the framework in Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). The book offers three things, in its authors' words: a validated instrument for diagnosing organizational culture, a theoretical model for understanding it, and a systematic strategy for changing it. The book has had later editions (Open Library, n.d.).

How it works

Two axes, four culture types. In the culture version of the framework, a university textbook summary explains, two distinctions do the sorting: whether an organization's attention points inward, at itself, or outward, at its environment, and whether it prefers stability and control or flexibility and change (Balogh, n.d.). Crossing them gives four types, which Cameron and Quinn's book names hierarchy, market, clan and adhocracy (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). The textbook glosses them this way (Balogh, n.d.):

• Hierarchy: rule-oriented.
• Market: goal-oriented.
• Clan: supportive.
• Adhocracy: innovation-oriented.

Cameron and Quinn's book explains how these values, and the cultures that emerge from them, change over time (Cameron & Quinn, 1999).

The OCAI. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument assesses six dimensions of culture and produces an overall culture profile. It asks what the current culture is like and what the preferred future culture should be like (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). The gap between the two profiles is the starting point for a culture change plan, and the book sets out a step-by-step process for it.

Culture, in this framework, refers to the taken-for-granted values, underlying assumptions, expectations and definitions present in an organization, or "how things are around here" (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). Compare the deeper levels in Edgar Schein's account of culture; the OCAI measures culture through a survey of what people perceive.

What the research says

The Evidence Library holds no graded test of the framework. The Library grades syntheses and trials on leading change, and it holds no meta-analysis or trial of the competing values framework or the OCAI.

Published evidence exists outside the Library. Hartnell, Ou and Kinicki (2011) published a meta-analysis of the framework's theoretical assumptions in the Journal of Applied Psychology, and the OCAI's authors present reliability and validity evidence in their book (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). Neither is graded in the Evidence Library, so this page names them as places to start and does not report what they found.

What the Library does hold on measuring culture. A systematic review of measures of organizational culture, organizational climate and implementation climate in behavioral health found several promising measures, but judged the overall state of measurement poor, with limited evidence that the measures detect change or predict outcomes (Powell et al., 2021, rated Medium from its abstract). The abstract does not mention the OCAI, but it is a caution for any culture survey used to track a change.

Culture and leadership travel together. In a survey of 356 employees in China, different cultures lined up with different leadership, such as supportive leaders in team-oriented cultures and task-focused leaders in detail-oriented ones (Chong et al., 2018, an Atlas study rated low). It is one survey, and the Atlas rates it low.

Where the evidence is thin

1. No graded test here. The framework's central claims, that these values compete and that the four types predict different outcomes, have no graded test in the Evidence Library.
2. Measuring change. Powell and colleagues (2021), reviewing measures used in behavioral health, found limited evidence that culture measures detect change over time. A culture survey run before and after a change may not show what the change did.
3. From profile to action. The OCAI shows a gap between current and preferred culture. The sources reviewed here do not test whether closing that gap improves performance.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

1. Week 0
   Before you start

   The OCAI asks people to describe both the current culture and the culture they prefer. Used that way, it is a baseline shared back with the people who supplied it.

2. 1
   Surface both ways
3. 2
   Make sense together, top included

   Comparing current and preferred profiles is only useful if leaders and managers work out together what the gap means for their own work.

4. 3
   Start it close to the work
5. 4
   Review on a rhythm, then hold the pace
6. 5
   The middle’s own weather
7. Ring
   Safe to speak, and speaking changes something

Highlighted parts are the ones this idea speaks to. The mapping is my reading, not a tested finding. See the whole Loop and the evidence for each part.

Common misreadings

"One culture type is best." The framework's name is the point. Cameron and Quinn describe the value orientations as usually competing, or contradictory to one another (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). A plan to make an organization all adhocracy, or all clan, misses that.

"The profile is the culture." The OCAI captures how people describe the culture. Cameron and Quinn write that people are often unaware of their culture until it is challenged or made explicit (Cameron & Quinn, 1999), which is part of why a survey can be useful, and also why it can miss things.

"The framework was built from case studies of companies." It began as a map of the criteria researchers use to judge effectiveness, derived from panels of theorists rather than from observing organizations (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983).

Using it well

1. Use the preferred profile, not only the current one. Ask people to rate both, and look at where the current and preferred profiles differ most. Cameron and Quinn's process starts from that gap (Cameron & Quinn, 1999).
2. Show the results to the people who supplied them. Share the profile with each team and ask what the gap looks like in a normal week. The survey is a starting point for that conversation, not a verdict.
3. Pick one behavior, not one culture type. "Become more adhocracy" is not a plan. "Every team tests one small change a month and reports what happened" is.