| The purpose of this interdisciplinary study in the field of organizational management sciences was to assess whether an intentional organizational culture transformation intervention (ITR) would be predictive of an increase in three measures of financial performance. Borrowing from the image of organization as networks of conversations, change agents Corporate Transformation Initiatives (CTI) stated the ITR was primarily intended to shift client enterprises' constructing narratives and what employees saw as possible in order to positively impact leadership, communication, teamwork, and economic performance. Towards becoming an industry leader CTI promoted sponsored, misleading statistical information and classroom studies. Since business failures are potentially fatal, such claims introduced risks for companies seeking optimal-fitness change initiatives. The research questioned if a set of three independent predictor variables (intervention status, type of industry, and year of intervention) could explain the variance in three measures of corporate earnings (revenue; gross profit, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). The main thrust was to assess the correlation between intervention status and company revenues. The critical review of literature from organizational management, psychology, philosophy, complexity and business research sciences distinguished "change" and "transformation", operationalized "corporate culture transformation", and critiqued the ITR approach, three previous relevant studies, and two alternative evaluations of organizational phenomena and business performance. Quantitative ex post facto research methods included inferential hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Data were generated from United States Securities and Exchange Commission Annual Reports filed by 60 domestic and foreign companies that did and did not implement the ITR approach that CTI used during 1994--1999. Statistical findings indicated that the three predictor variables significantly explained approximately 16% of variance in revenue gainscores, with intervention status responsible for the largest portion of explained variance. The regression equation predicted higher revenues for companies that had the ITR than those without. This was an initial empirical study. The findings should be replicated in order for business leaders and scholar-practitioners to make informed decisions. This represents the first independent scientific quantitative study conducted on the ITR and contributes a socially meaningful evaluation of the organizations' financial performance. Further research on this topic is merited and recommended. |
