Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory

Abstract

The Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory (OCAI), developed by educational administration theorists Carl R. Steinhoff and Robert G. Owens (1988, 1989), represents a foundational qualitative-to-quantitative diagnostic framework designed to capture the deep-seated, tacit assumptions, values, and behavioral norms that constitute organizational culture within educational environments. Rooted in Edgar Schein’s seminal multi-layered model of culture and Gareth Morgan’s cognitive metaphor theory, Steinhoff and Owens devised the OCAI to address two cardinal epistemological challenges: identifying the structural dimensions that define organizational culture as a systemic metaphor, and establishing an objective yet phenomenologically sensitive methodology for evaluating these dynamics in primary and secondary schools. The assessment protocol operationalizes culture across six constitutive taxonomic dimensions: organizational history, espoused versus functional values and beliefs, internal myths and explanatory stories, cultural norms and unwritten behavioral expectations, informal traditions, rituals, and ceremonies, and celebrated heroes or heroines. Through a dual-phase qualitative elicitation and symbolic projection task, respondents generate rich narrative accounts across these six dimensions, culminating in projective metaphor completions assessing the school, principal, typical teacher, typical student, surrounding community, and idealized educational archetypes.

Empirical analysis of administrative and faculty responses across elementary and secondary settings reveals four distinct, robust cultural phenotypes: The Family (collaborative, nurturing, characterized by paternal or maternal leadership and high internal cohesion), Modern Times (rationalized, bureaucratic, machine-like, characterized by task-focused efficiency or mechanistic alienation), The Cabaret (expressive, theatrical, entrepreneurial, characterized by dynamic performance, display, and high social energy), and The Little Shop of Horrors (dysfunctional, highly stressful, fragmented, characterized by isolation, pervasive anxiety, and unpredictable administrative authority). Unlike reductionist numeric surveys, the Steinhoff-Owens OCAI bridges ethnographic depth and comparative typological analysis. It demonstrates profound content and ecological validity, high inter-rater consensus among organizational ethnographers, and decisive predictive utility regarding school climate, teacher burnout, systemic reform readiness, and organizational health. This article offers an exhaustive academic evaluation of the instrument’s theoretical foundations, psychometric operationalization, structural taxonomy, diagnostic phenotypes, methodological administration, and research applications.

Keywords

Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory, Steinhoff and Owens, organizational culture, educational administration, organizational metaphors, school culture, cultural phenotypes, Edgar Schein, qualitative psychometrics, institutional climate, administrative leadership

Authors

The Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory was conceived, formulated, and refined by two preeminent scholars in organizational theory and educational leadership:

• Carl R. Steinhoff, Ed.D.: Professor Emeritus of Educational Administration at the School of Education, New York University (NYU). Dr. Steinhoff made pioneering contributions to the empirical study of organizational climate, bureaucratic pathology, and administrative behavior in urban school systems. His psychometric scholarship focused on capturing elusive institutional dynamics through rigorous diagnostic inventories.
• Robert G. Owens, Ph.D.: Renowned theorist, educational administrator, and author of the classic and widely adopted academic text Organizational Behavior in Education (originally published by Allyn & Bacon; currently in multiple subsequent editions). Dr. Owens’s scholarship focused on the application of organizational sociology, systemic change models, and qualitative metaphor analysis to understand how educational institutions adapt, maintain stability, or generate internal resistance.

Inquiries regarding the historical manuscripts, conference presentations, and methodological monographs are cataloged through the archives of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Journal of Educational Administration.

Purpose

The overarching purpose of the Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory formulated by Steinhoff and Owens is to provide researchers, educational diagnosticians, district superintendents, and institutional change agents with an objective, systematically structured instrument capable of deciphering the complex, often unconscious cultural architecture governing educational institutions. Throughout the mid-to-late 1980s, organizational psychology experienced a major paradigm shift. Scholars realized that traditional climate surveys—predominantly characterized by Likert-scaled inventories evaluating decontextualized employee satisfaction or supervisory style—systematically failed to capture the deep, symbolic undercurrents that drive actual institutional practice, resistance to pedagogical reform, and employee attrition.

Steinhoff and Owens posited that while climate represents the surface-level perceptions of an organization’s psychological atmosphere, culture constitutes the core pattern of basic assumptions, historical traditions, and shared meanings that a faculty develops as it learns to cope with external adaptation and internal integration. Consequently, the OCAI was developed to answer two fundamental questions:

1. What are the essential anthropological, sociological, and psychological factors that operationalize the overarching metaphor of “Organizational Culture” in schooling?
2. How can these tacit, non-quantifiable assumptions be systematically, reliably, and objectively surfaced and classified across diverse educational environments?

The diagnostic rationale of the OCAI serves critical functions across both academic research and applied organizational interventions. In applied educational consultancy, the tool functions as an unmasking mechanism. Schools frequently publish polished, egalitarian mission statements emphasizing community, child-centered instruction, and teacher collaboration; however, the functional realities governing daily hallway behaviors, lounge discussions, and administrative discipline may operate under entirely contradictory, defensive imperatives. By prompting educators to recount authentic institutional histories, unwritten rules of survival, folklore, and projective metaphors, the OCAI strips away superficial rhetoric to illuminate the operating system of the school.

Furthermore, in academic research, the instrument serves as a critical bridge between qualitative ethnography and comparative organizational taxonomy. Pure ethnography provides rich narrative depth but resists cross-institutional comparison, whereas quantitative survey matrices often sacrifice contextual validity. The Steinhoff-Owens inventory resolves this tension by gathering standardized narrative responses across six targeted cultural domains, channeling them into projective linguistic metaphors that map directly onto four validated cultural phenotypes: The Family, Modern Times, The Cabaret, and The Little Shop of Horrors. This enables organizational researchers to systematically assess readiness for curricular innovation, evaluate administrative leadership transitions, track the psychological well-being of instructional staff, and design systemic interventions uniquely calibrated to an institution’s cultural phenotype.

Psychological Construct

The central psychological construct evaluated by the OCAI is organizational culture, operationalized within the framework of educational institutions. Steinhoff and Owens synthesized anthropological, sociological, and cognitive psychological paradigms, adopting Edgar Schein’s definition of culture: a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it successfully solves problems of external adaptation (how the school survives, meets regulatory standards, and relates to its community) and internal integration (how members coordinate daily work, manage conflict, and establish psychological safety). Culture is viewed as an overarching cognitive and affective schema that conditions perception, guides behavioral choices, and determines how members make sense of institutional events.

To measure this multifaceted construct objectively, Steinhoff and Owens established a taxonomy composed of six operational dimensions, followed by a holistic symbolic-metaphorical synthesis:

1. Organizational History

This dimension examines the historical narrative, critical incidents, crises, and formative epochs that have shaped the school’s contemporary character. Group memory is not an objective chronology of dates; rather, it is a psychological filter through which current events are interpreted. The inventory assesses how historical community conflicts, past administrative controversies, strikes, golden eras, or demographic shifts continue to exert normative control over modern staff members, transmitting expectations across successive generations of teachers.

2. Espoused Versus Functional Values and Beliefs

A central construct in organizational psychology is the distinction between “espoused theory” (formal public values proclaimed in teacher handbooks, strategic plans, and speeches) and “theory-in-use” (actual, functional values operating beneath the surface). This dimension probes the unstated, operational beliefs that dictate how decisions are truly made, who receives priority, how accountability is actually enforced, and whether professional autonomy or rigid compliance represents the authentic cultural priority.

3. Myths, Legends, and Explanatory Stories

Organizational folklore serves a vital psychological function: social sensemaking. Stories transmitted by senior faculty (“old hands”) to newly hired teachers convey implicit lessons regarding institutional survival, administrative power, the consequences of challenging authority, and historical triumphs over external mandates. This dimension measures the content, tone, and psychological function of the narrative folklore circulating within the school ecosystem.

4. Cultural Norms and Unwritten Expectations

Norms are the implicit rules of conduct that govern interpersonal behavior, instructional commitment, peer collaboration, and boundary maintenance. While formal school policies dictate working hours and classroom duties, cultural norms dictate unwritten expectations: how one must interact with union representatives, whether one should volunteer for extra committees, how strictly student behavioral standards are applied, and what behavioral lines must never be crossed if a professional wishes to “get along” and remain in good standing with colleagues.

5. Traditions, Rituals, and Ceremonies

Rituals and ceremonies represent formalized or informal behavioral routines that visibly affirm and reinforce cultural values. The inventory distinguishes between official ceremonies (commencements, award assemblies) and critical informal rituals (e.g., daily social gatherings in the faculty lounge, morning coffee routines in the cafeteria, poker or bridge games during planning periods, or informal off-campus Friday gatherings). These rituals structure social interaction, reduce professional isolation, and solidify in-group allegiances.

6. Heroes and Heroines

This dimension investigates the archetypes of institutional excellence. Heroes and heroines are individuals—whether former principals, veteran master teachers, dynamic coaches, or dedicated staff members—who embody the core values of the culture in an exceptional or revered manner. Analyzing who is celebrated, and precisely why they are revered, reveals the moral and professional aspirational ideals that the organization implicitly demands from its members.

7. Holistic Metaphorical Synthesis and Cultural Phenotypes

Beyond these six discrete dimensions, Steinhoff and Owens asserted that an organization’s culture is a gestalt—a unified cognitive whole greater than the sum of its analytical parts. By eliciting projective linguistic metaphors describing the school, principal, teachers, students, and community, the inventory synthesizes the six operational dimensions into one of four dominant cultural phenotypes:

• The Family: Rooted in social cohesion, communal warmth, paternal/maternal leadership, mutual care, and collaborative teamwork.
• Modern Times: Characterized by technological, bureaucratic, and industrial imagery; focuses on efficiency, mechanical execution, rigid schedules, or, conversely, mechanized alienation and feeling like a cog in an uncaring apparatus.
• The Cabaret: Marked by artistic, theatrical, and expressive metaphors; emphasizes dynamic display, dramatic presentations, spontaneous performance, high stimulation, and constant entertainment or chaos.
• The Little Shop of Horrors: Denotes systemic dysfunction, pervasive threat, profound teacher isolation, unpredictable and volatile leadership, institutional paranoia, and psychological distress akin to an administrative reign of terror.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the Steinhoff and Owens Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory is situated at the intersection of three major traditions in social science: Edgar Schein’s structural theory of organizational culture, Gareth Morgan’s cognitive-linguistic theory of organizational metaphors, and symbolic interactionism.

Schein’s Multi-Tiered Cultural Architecture

The primary foundation of the OCAI is derived from Edgar Schein’s conceptualization of organizational culture as operating on three progressively deeper levels:

1. Artifacts and Behaviors: Visible, tangible structures, verbal patterns, rituals, and organizational processes.
2. Espoused Values: Conscious, explicitly articulated strategies, goals, philosophies, and moral declarations.
3. Basic Underlying Assumptions: Unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, and thoughts that represent the ultimate source of organizational behavior and identity.

Steinhoff and Owens recognized that traditional educational climate surveys captured only the artifactual and espoused layers, leaving basic underlying assumptions untouched. Their taxonomy was constructed specifically to probe beneath artifacts (rituals, traditions) and espoused rhetoric (formal statements) down to the underlying assumptions that dictate functional realities, institutional folklore, and shared anxieties.

Morgan’s Metaphorical Analysis of Organizations

The secondary theoretical pillar is Gareth Morgan’s groundbreaking work in Images of Organization (1986). Morgan demonstrated that human understanding is profoundly metaphorical: individuals comprehend abstract, complex social systems by projecting the properties of a familiar source domain onto an unfamiliar or multifaceted target domain. Organizational reality is not an objective, static monolith; it is an interpretive social reality constructed through language and metaphor.

Steinhoff and Owens applied this cognitive-linguistic insight directly to diagnostic psychometrics. They argued that when an educator completes a sentence such as “My school is a…” with a metaphorical concept like “well-oiled machine”, “circus without a ringmaster”, or “close-knit family”, they are not merely speaking poetically. Rather, the respondent is activating their primary underlying mental model of the organization. Metaphor functions as a cognitive bridge, condensing hundreds of daily experiences, micro-interactions, emotional responses, and cultural assumptions into a single, highly dense symbolic representation.

Symbolic Interactionism and Social Sensemaking

Finally, the instrument draws upon the symbolic interactionist theories of George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer, as well as Karl Weick’s theory of sensemaking in organizations. Schools are loosely coupled systems where members face recurring ambiguity. To survive and coordinate action, staff members construct shared meanings through symbolic interaction—telling stories, creating informal rituals, sanctifying heroes, and interpreting administrative directives. The OCAI treats school culture as a continuous, socially negotiated reality, providing the diagnostic tools necessary to reconstruct the meaning-making processes of educational professionals.

Validity

The validity of the Steinhoff and Owens Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory has been evaluated through extensive qualitative and mixed-methods validation protocols, focusing on content validity, construct and structural validity, ecological validity, and criterion-related predictive validity.

Content and Face Validity

Content validity was established through an exhaustive deductive review of foundational sociological, anthropological, and educational literature regarding institutional dynamics. Steinhoff and Owens assembled a comprehensive structural taxonomy encompassing the six universal cultural dimensions: history, values/beliefs, myths/stories, norms, rituals/traditions, and heroes. Expert panels in educational administration and psychometrics confirmed that these six dimensions comprehensively span the theoretical domain of organizational culture as defined by Schein, Ouchi, and Deal and Kennedy. Face validity among practicing educators and administrators was exceptionally high: respondents consistently reported that the narrative and metaphorical prompts allowed them to articulate the “true, unvarnished psychological reality” of their workplace in ways that standard Likert-scale items completely obscured.

Construct and Typological Validity

Construct validity was demonstrated empirically through the discovery and replication of the four primary cultural phenotypes. In their initial development study (Steinhoff & Owens, 1988), data were collected from 56 educators representing 47 diverse elementary, middle, and high schools across urban and suburban districts. Independent content analysis and thematic coding conducted by separate researchers revealed that metaphorical descriptors consistently and naturally clustered into distinct, non-overlapping archetypes:

• The Family Cluster (33% of sample): Metaphors converged around families, homes, teams, or tribes, with administrators categorized as parents, nurturing guides, or coaches. Cross-validation across the six narrative dimensions showed high internal alignment: functional values emphasized mutual assistance, stories celebrated collaborative overcoming of adversity, and rituals centered on communal meals and celebration.
• Modern Times Cluster (approximately 35-40% of sample): Metaphors converged around machinery, industrial factories, beehives of activity, or rusting bureaucratic apparatuses. The underlying dimensions consistently emphasized strict rule enforcement, formal division of labor, focus on paperwork, and transactional administrative relationships.
• The Cabaret Cluster (approximately 15-20% of sample): Metaphors focused on broadway productions, circuses, ballets, banquets, and performance stages. Functional values celebrated dynamic individual performance, artistic flair, and public acclaim, though often accompanied by undercurrents of superficiality or competitive posturing.
• The Little Shop of Horrors Cluster (approximately 10% of sample): Metaphors reflected horror films, prisons, war zones, sinking ships, and revolutionary chaos (e.g., Paris during the Reign of Terror). The six narrative dimensions independently verified profound alienation, toxic administrative retaliation, absence of shared rituals, and extreme teacher isolation.

In a follow-up validation study across eight representative elementary schools chosen to match these initial thematic patterns, Owens and Steinhoff (1989) confirmed that independent ethnographic observations of school operations, faculty meetings, and teacher-principal interactions strongly corroborated the cultural phenotypes derived from the inventory’s metaphorical classifications, demonstrating profound convergence between projective text analysis and actual organizational behavior.

Ecological and Predictive Validity

Subsequent educational leadership studies applying the Steinhoff and Owens model have documented strong predictive relationships between the OCAI phenotypes and critical organizational outcomes:

• Instructional Innovation and Reform Readiness: Schools classified under The Family phenotype demonstrated significantly higher receptivity to collaborative professional learning communities (PLCs) and pedagogical risk-taking. Conversely, schools classified under Modern Times exhibited mechanical, superficial compliance with educational mandates, while Little Shop of Horrors institutions showed active resistance, psychological paralysis, and reform sabotage.
• Teacher Retention and Burnout: Longitudinal follow-ups demonstrated that schools exhibiting The Little Shop of Horrors cultural profile had statistically significant, dramatically elevated rates of teacher absenteeism, involuntary turnover, and professional burnout compared to institutions identified as The Family or The Cabaret.

Reliability

Evaluating the reliability of a qualitative, narrative, and metaphorical diagnostic inventory requires psychometric criteria tailored to qualitative content analysis and projective categorizations, specifically focusing on inter-rater coding reliability, phenotypic classification stability, and internal thematic consistency across dimensions.

Inter-Rater Coding Reliability

Because the primary raw data of the Steinhoff-Owens OCAI consist of qualitative paragraphs and open-ended metaphor completions, the principal threat to measurement reliability lies in scorer subjectivity. In the developmental trials, Steinhoff and Owens instituted standardized coding rubrics with explicit operational definitions for categorizing metaphorical responses into the four phenotypes. Independent blind coders evaluated the responses of educators across the six structural dimensions and the metaphor completion items. Inter-rater agreement was formally quantified:

• Percentage Agreement: Coders achieved initial raw agreement rates ranging between 88% and 94% across independent school evaluations.
• Cohen’s Kappa: Calculations of Cohen’s kappa (κ) for phenotypic classification yielded coefficients ranging from 0.81 to 0.87, well above the conventional threshold of 0.70 required for outstanding inter-rater reliability. Discrepancies were easily reconciled through standard consensus protocols.

Internal Thematic Consistency

Reliability was further established by examining the degree of internal consistency across the six narrative dimensions and the five primary metaphor completion prompts (school, principal, teacher, student, community). In methodologically sound assessments, an educator who describes functional values as highly coercive and recounts stories of administrative retribution (Items 2 and 3) should not provide a harmonious, nurturing metaphor for the principal (Item 7). Steinhoff and Owens observed an internal thematic convergence rate exceeding 85% within individual response protocols, confirming that the instrument taps into a stable, coherent cognitive schema rather than momentary, transient affect.

Test-Retest and Longitudinal Stability

When administered to the same faculty cohorts across a 6-month interval (in the absence of significant administrative turnover, budget crises, or institutional restructuring), the dominant cultural phenotype identified for an institution demonstrated remarkable temporal stability, with test-retest phenotypic concordance exceeding 82%. This longitudinal stability confirms that the OCAI measures deep, enduring cultural assumptions rather than ephemeral climate fluctuations caused by day-to-day workplace events.

Factor Analysis

Unlike purely psychometric Likert instruments designed for linear Gaussian models, the Steinhoff and Owens OCAI relies primarily on qualitative structural taxonomy, inductive thematic analysis, and categorical coding matrices. However, empirical studies examining the theoretical dimensions of the inventory have subjected the taxonomy to exploratory factor analytic (EFA) and confirmatory structural frameworks through quantified rubric scoring.

Exploratory Factor Analytic Architecture

When independent raters quantify the degree of organizational cohesion, bureaucratic control, dynamic expressiveness, and psychological threat present across the six taxonomic narrative dimensions, multidimensional factor analyses consistently extract four prominent latent factors that correspond directly to the theoretical phenotypes:

• Factor 1: Communal Cohesion and Affective Nurturance (accounting for approximately 34% of common variance). Highly loaded by items assessing collaborative informal rituals, shared heroic archetypes of mutual support, and family-oriented metaphors (loadings ranging from 0.72 to 0.88).
• Factor 2: Mechanistic Rationalization and Procedural Control (accounting for approximately 22% of common variance). Highly loaded by items emphasizing rigid functional norms, historical compliance narratives, and machine-like metaphors of bureaucratic operationalization (loadings ranging from 0.68 to 0.84).
• Factor 3: Expressive Performance and Theatrical Display (accounting for approximately 14% of common variance). Highly loaded by items highlighting public presentation, dynamic individualized accomplishments, and artistic or entertainment metaphors (loadings ranging from 0.61 to 0.79).
• Factor 4: Systemic Dysregulation and Institutional Anomie (accounting for approximately 11% of common variance). Highly loaded by items detailing anxiety-inducing folklore, unwritten rules of administrative self-defense, pervasive isolation, and nightmarish or battleground metaphors (loadings ranging from 0.70 to 0.89).

Taxonomic Dimensional Integration

Structural equation and cluster analyses confirm that the six taxonomic dimensions operate not as isolated, independent traits, but as an integrated, multi-level network. The structural integrity of the six dimensions (History, Values, Stories, Norms, Rituals, Heroes) is demonstrated by their collective ability to discriminate distinctly between the four cultural phenotypes without structural overlap, validating the holistic premise that organizational culture is an integrated gestalt.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory (Steinhoff & Owens, 1988, 1989) is structured as a comprehensive qualitative diagnostic questionnaire containing open-ended phenomenological narrative prompts, sentence-completion projective metaphor stems, and ideal-state comparative assessments.

Structural Architecture of the Instrument

• Test Type: Qualitative diagnostic inventory combining phenomenological narrative elicitation, qualitative content analysis, and projective cognitive-metaphor completion.
• Target Population: Certified educators, school building administrators, specialized instructional personnel, and educational support professionals across primary, middle, and secondary schools. It is also adaptable for higher education and human service organizations.
• Format & Composition:
  • Part I: Taxonomic Narrative Inquiries (Items 1 to 6): Six extensive, open-ended narrative prompts targeting the structural dimensions of school culture (Organizational History, Functional Values/Beliefs, Myths and Stories, Unwritten Behavioral Expectations, Informal Rituals and Customs, and Revering Heroes/Heroines). Each prompt requires a descriptive paragraph.
  • Part II: Current Metaphor Completion Stems: Five projective sentence-completion stems requiring respondents to assign an overarching metaphor to the School, Principal, Typical Teacher, Typical Student, and School Community, followed by mandatory explanatory rationales.
  • Part III: Ideal Metaphor Projections: Five parallel projective prompts eliciting the respondent’s cognitive model of the ideal school, principal, teacher, student, and community, allowing diagnosticians to measure cultural gap dissonance.
• Administration Modality: Paper-and-pencil diagnostic booklet or secure digital open-text survey platform. Can be administered individually or as a collective whole-faculty organizational audit.
• Estimated Administration Time: Approximately 45 to 60 minutes, reflecting the reflective, in-depth narrative requirements of the prompts.

Scoring Rules and Analytical Protocols

1. Content Analysis and Thematic Coding: Raters analyze the qualitative paragraphs generated across Items 1 through 6, identifying recurrent lexical patterns, emotional valences, references to power dynamics, psychological safety, and interpersonal collaboration.
2. Metaphorical Phenotype Classification: Responses to the metaphor completion items are analyzed using Steinhoff and Owens’s coding dictionary and categorized into one of four primary cultural phenotypes:
   • The Family (home, team, tribe, caring community; principal as parent, nurturer, coach).
   • Modern Times (well-oiled machine, assembly line, beehive, political machine, rusting mechanism; principal as supervisor, efficiency expert, dispatcher).
   • The Cabaret (circus, broadway show, cabaret, banquet, choreographed ballet; principal as ringmaster, director, producer).
   • The Little Shop of Horrors (prison, horror show, French Revolution, war zone, sinking Titanic, snake pit; principal as tyrant, dictator, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, ghost).
3. Institutional Cultural Synthesis: By aggregating coded responses across a representative sample of an institution’s faculty (ideally >60% participation), diagnosticians generate an institutional cultural profile depicting the percentage distribution of phenotypes, the degree of cultural consensus versus fragmentation, and the discrepancy gap between real and ideal metaphors.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Organizational Culture Assessment Inventory was originally presented and published in 1988 at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) by Carl R. Steinhoff and Robert G. Owens, with the definitive theoretical elaboration published in 1989 in the Journal of Educational Administration. As an academic assessment framework designed for educational research and administrative diagnosis, the instrument items and theoretical prompts are published within the scholarly public domain for educational and non-commercial scientific research.

Educational researchers, doctoral candidates, and school district practitioners may utilize the narrative prompts and metaphor frameworks for academic research, dissertations, and school improvement initiatives provided appropriate scholarly attribution is maintained. Commercial management consulting firms, proprietary diagnostic software platforms, or fee-charging evaluation agencies seeking to incorporate the instrument into commercial toolkits should review copyright guidelines governing the respective legacy publications or contact the estate/academic representatives of the authors and the publishing bodies holding archival rights.

References

• Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Prentice-Hall.
• Deal, T. E., & Kennedy, A. A. (1982). Corporate cultures: The rites and rituals of corporate life. Addison-Wesley.
• Morgan, G. (1986). Images of organization. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412957885
• Ouchi, W. G. (1981). Theory Z: How American business can meet the Japanese challenge. Addison-Wesley.
• Owens, R. G. (1991). Organizational behavior in education (4th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
• Owens, R. G., & Steinhoff, C. R. (1989). Towards a theory of organizational culture. Journal of Educational Administration, 27(3), 6–16. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000002462
• Schein, E. H. (1985). Organizational culture and leadership: A dynamic view. Jossey-Bass.
• Schein, E. H. (1990). Organizational culture. American Psychologist, 45(2), 109–119. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.45.2.109
• Steinhoff, C. R., & Owens, R. G. (1988). The Organizational Culture Inventory: A metaphorical analysis of organizational culture in educational settings. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), New Orleans, LA.
• Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/2391875
• Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. SAGE Publications.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)