Creating high-performance organizations in the public sector

Accurate information about an organization's culture can provide a basis for improving processes and enhancing outcomes such as customer service and return on investment. Using a reliable and valid survey is an effective way to obtain employee perceptions about the organizational culture. This article describes the development and use of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's Organizational Assessment Survey. It provides two examples, the U.S. Mint and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region VI, that show how measures of organizational culture can help federal agencies become high-performance organizations. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.