Organizational Culture Assessment As Part of Building Programming

Martin Hodulak Hodulak Workplace Consultants

In professional practice, building programs in general outline the client’s project goals, his existing restrictions together with his available resources as well as his needs in terms of required quantities and qualities. In the authors practice experience of the past years, the need for a further consideration as part of the building program evolved, that of assessing the current and desired culture of the client’s organization. Knowledge on this aspect proved to be valuable as a basis as well as a guideline for all further considerations.

In the process of gathering information for a building program, various participatory methodologies are deployed. On the one hand, quantitative information, such as number of workplaces, size of spaces needed for archiving, or the number of monitors at particular workplaces are often collected via questionnaires and later aligned in work sessions. On the other hand, information and requirements on functionalities and qualities are more complex, less explicit and often need to be gathered and aligned in interviews and workshops to maintain accuracy and credibility. Organizational culture is implicit and deeply hidden information. It is based on beliefs and values, which are rarely discussed, as it is assumed that these are universally shared across an organization. To uncover this information for building programs, the author made use of the Organizational Culture Assessment Index (OCAI), developed by Cameron and Quinn.

In this paper the author briefly outlines his approach on programming. Based on a case study, he describes in more detail the OCAI methodology in context to program development and discusses the effects of OCAI on needs assessment and on building programs.