| This case study explores how organizational subunits may have cultural values that compete with top-management implementation of system-wide planning. The study employs the competing values framework (CVF) (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1981) to assess organizational subcultures in a Department of Defense military university for senior executives (i.e. pseudonym "MUSE"). Specifically, the CVF-based Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) (Cameron & Quinn, 1999) is used to diagnose distinctive subcultures in four MUSE subunits. This is the first time the OCAI has been used in this manner as indicated by available research published to-date and by personal correspondence with one of the OCAI authors (K. Cameron, personal communication, July 2, 2001). Additional quantitative and qualitative data are collected over an eighteen-month period to substantiate the OCAI findings. This case also develops and employs a unique planning typology to investigate how the members of the identified four organizational subcultures agree or disagree with a top-management system-wide planning effort. The MUSE top-management planning effort is based in the "Balanced Scorecard" (BSC) method, popularized by Kaplan and Norton (1996, 2001 a). The results of this case study demonstrate a patterned relationship between subunit subcultures and the way that these subunits would prefer to conduct planning. Based in diagnosing subcultural preferences for system-wide planning types, the study also reveals substantial disagreement patterns with top-management use of BSC. Overall, the study indicates that diagnosing organizational subcultures and planning agreement patterns can inform organizational efforts to integrate activities and decisions through system-wide planning. |
