Identifying Organizational Subcultures: An Empirical Approach
通过对一家丹麦保险公司131个工作组的调查数据做聚类分析，识别出三种亚文化：专业型、行政型和客户界面型，并验证了理论预测。
Organizations have cultures, but parts of organizations may have distinct subcultures. The question of what is the proper level for a cultural analysis of an organization is generally handled intuitively. The organizational culture of a large Danish insurance company (3,400 employees) was measured, based on employees’ answers to 18 key questions about work practices. Subsequently, scores were determined separately for 131 work groups, and these were subjected to a hierarchical cluster analysis, which produced a dendrogram. The dendrogram showed that within the company there were three distinct subcultures: a professional subculture, an administrative subculture, and a customer interface subculture. These fit a theoretical prediction by Jones (1983); the cultural rifts between the subcultures could be readily recognized in the company’s practice, and had tangible consequences.