Analyzing Existing and Targeted Culture Typologies in the Light of the Strategy Document in Foundation Universities: The Case of A Foundation University

Abstract

Universities are multi-cultural, complicated, social education organizations. The presence of academic and administrative employees at these organizations might result in cultural differentiation, which is influenced by changing environmental conditions and social change dynamics. The purpose of this research is to determine the foundation university's dominant current and targeted cultural typologies using a foundation university as an example and to compare them to the university's target culture typology based on an analysis of the university strategy document. This comparison will aid in defining the perspectives of the organization's members through the concept of culture to achieve the university's strategic goals. Also, the examination of the strategy document, mission, the vision of the university and at the same time questioning the organization members’ opinions about this topic fills a hole in the literature in terms of observing two sides of the coin; “rulers” and “ruled”. In addition, we need to start to gain knowledge about foundation universities’ organizational culture because we already know that cultural awareness is crucial for an organization lifetime and this knowledge comes from the analyses of it. Among the different approaches used throughout the world to define organizational culture, Cameron and Quinn's "Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument in Competing Values Framework" was employed in the study. This research was conducted with a multi-modal methodological approach by using both quantitative and qualitative methods together with the questionnaire and document analysis. According to the findings, university organization members' current (market-competition) and targeted (clan-collaboration) organizational culture typology interpretations diverge from the university's strategy on the same subject.