Is it Just Me? Exploring Perceptions of Organizational Culture Change

A review of the literature on organizational culture change suggests that the field might benefit from studies combining both etic (researcher) and emic (employee) perspectives to examine individuals’ views regarding how and why their culture has changed. This paper seeks to deepen researchers’ knowledge of how individuals perceive organizational culture change by undertaking a two-part study within an organization that has undergone planned cultural change initiatives. More specifically survey (i.e. etic view) data and interview (i.e. emic view) data are used to explore: (1) factors associated with (a) whether an individual will perceive that culture change has occurred, and (b) whether they categorize this change as for the better, for the worse or one that could not be categorized using these two labels; and (2) individuals’ rationales for why the culture has changed. The findings are mixed regarding the extent to which they support or refute existing research on organizational culture change.