1.1 Competing Values Framework (CVF) for Assessing Organizational Culture
Purpose
This instrument was created to provide insights into leadership dynamics within healthcare organizations, aiming to understand organizational culture and identify factors that influence leaders’ effectiveness. By applying the CVF, researchers and practitioners can gain insights into how different cultural attributes influence organizational effectiveness and employee well-being.
Historically, the CVF has been employed in various healthcare settings to achieve a better understanding of organizational culture and to drive improvements in hospital performance and patient care. Hospitals and healthcare institutions have used this framework to identify strengths and weaknesses in their cultural attributes and to develop strategies for enhancing organizational effectiveness. For example, the CVF has been used to explore relationships between an organization’s cultural dimensions (e.g., clan, market, hierarchy, and adhocracy) and outcomes including patient satisfaction, staff cohesiveness, participation, loyalty, tradition, morale, and board-level innovations.
The CVF is typically administered to many individuals in an organization, such as healthcare professionals, administrative staff, and leadership. By gathering input from a diverse group of stakeholders, the instrument provides a comprehensive view of the organization’s cultural landscape.
Description
The CVF was developed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983). West et al. (2015) identified the CVF as the predominant method for evaluating organizational culture within healthcare organizations. The CVF has been applied in various studies of healthcare organizations, particularly those examining hospitals (West et al., 2015, p. 14). Studies have shown positive associations between supportive leadership, staff perceptions of effective leaders, and a climate conducive to excellence in healthcare.
The CVF’s 16-item leadership questionnaire measures four distinct leadership roles: Vision Setter, Motivator, Analyzer, and Task Master. Each item is rated on a Likert scale, typically ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Scores for each leadership role are calculated by averaging the ratings for the corresponding items. Higher scores indicate a stronger presence of that leadership role.
Internal consistency for each dimension ranged from .39 to .71, with acceptable reliability except for Analyzer (.39) (Hart & Quinn, 1993). The instrument has been validated through factor analysis. Initial validation involved healthcare staff, but specific sample sizes were not detailed. As mentioned above, the Analyzer role had a lower internal consistency score (.39), indicating potential issues with reliability in this dimension (Hart & Quinn, 1993). We recommend additional studies to improve the reliability of the Analyzer dimension and to validate the instrument in different healthcare contexts and with larger sample sizes.
Access
The CVF is available online through academic journals and research databases. It can be accessed via the articles listed in the references section. Using the instrument may require permission from the authors. Users of this tool are advised to consult the original articles or directly contact the authors to ascertain the instrument’s availability and any associated permission requirements.
References
Hart, S. L., & Quinn, R. E. (1993). Roles executives play: CEOs, behavioral complexity, and firm performance. Human Relations, 46(5), 543–574. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679304600501
West, M., Armit, K., Loewenthal, L., Eckert, R., West, T. and Lee, A. (2015). Leadership and leadership development in healthcare: The evidence base. The King’s Fund. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/439515/
Quinn, R. E., & Rohrbaugh, Q. (1983). A spatial model of effectiveness criteria: Towards a competing values approach to organizational analysis. Management Science 29(3), 363–377. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.29.3.363
