Abstract:
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Organisational culture can contribute towards or detract from an organisation’s success.
It is therefore important to manage this aspect of the organisation. Effective
management requires the measurement and assessment of the activities and elements
of the organisation.
This mini-research report aims to produce a tool which can assess the personality of an
organisation’s culture and its sub-cultures; and to relate this to organisational leadership
and recruitment. Secondary literature was reviewed in order to identify candidate
dimensions of personality. The candidate dimensions of personality are derived from
salient themes within Eysenck’s PEN model of personality and these are mindfulness,
sociability and propensity to activity. These themes are translated into business
equivalents as ‘strategic awareness’, ‘engaged leadership’ and ‘collective performance’.
Factor analysis was applied to the completed questionnaires of Havenga’s Integrated
Leadership, Climate and Culture survey. The survey contains 24 questions which
assess organisational culture in terms of performance and intergroup behaviour. Over
800 responses were analysed in order to validate the candidate dimensions of
personality. The factor analysis yielded two factors which were utilised as dimensions in
the produced tool and these were labelled as ‘strategic awareness’ and ‘engaged
leadership’. A third dimension, ‘collective performance’, was included in the tool and
was measured by two of the questions contained in the ILCC survey. Eight questions in
total are utilised by the tool.
The tool is tested against an organisation represented in the sample and the results are
compared to the initial ILCC survey and assessment of the same organisation. The tool
is found to be valid for the organisation and is considered to be generalisable to the
leisure industry in South Africa. Organisational leadership and the recruitment of
personnel are also found to be contributing factors of an organisation’s culture. The
author recommends that this tool be used to assess an organisation’s culture, within its
limitations; and that the members’ propensity to thoughtfulness, sociability and activity
are considered during the recruitment process.
