Organizational Culture & Change Flashcards
7 cards from real CCA practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Organizational Culture & Change flashcards as text
An organization wants to assess its current culture before launching a major change. Which tool is specifically designed to map competing cultural values?
Answer: Competing Values Framework (CVF) Assessment
The CVF Assessment by Quinn and Rohrbaugh maps organizations across four culture types (clan, adhocracy, market, hierarchy) to identify dominant cultural values.
A change agent observes that storytelling is frequently used during change rollouts. What is the primary cultural function of organizational storytelling during change?
Answer: To transmit cultural values and create shared meaning around the change narrative
Stories are powerful cultural carriers that create emotional resonance and shared meaning, helping people connect personally to the change.
In the context of organizational culture and change, what does 'psychological safety' specifically enable?
Answer: People to speak up, take risks, and surface problems without fear of punishment
Amy Edmondson's research shows psychological safety enables learning behaviors critical for change, including voicing concerns and admitting mistakes.
A company has a 'market culture' orientation (per CVF). Which change initiative would face the LEAST cultural resistance?
Answer: Launching a results-driven competitive performance improvement program
Market cultures are inherently results-driven and competitive, so performance improvement initiatives align naturally with existing cultural values.
Which of the following is an example of a 'second-order' cultural change?
Answer: Shifting from a command-and-control leadership model to a servant leadership model organization-wide
Second-order change alters fundamental frames, values, and rules of operation—like a leadership philosophy shift—rather than just improving existing systems.
When managing change in a multicultural organization, which practice BEST prevents cultural assumptions from derailing the initiative?
Answer: Conducting cultural context assessments and adapting change approaches regionally
Adapting change approaches based on local cultural assessments ensures methods align with how people in each context make decisions and respond to change.
A change agent identifies that an organization's culture rewards 'heroic individual problem-solving' rather than collaborative learning. Why is this a significant obstacle to sustained change?
Answer: It prevents the development of organizational learning capacity needed for adaptive change
Cultures that reward heroic individualism suppress collective learning and knowledge-sharing, limiting the organization's ability to adapt and evolve.