Strategic versus Diffusion Perspectives of Organizational Culture: Implications for Employee Commitment and Extra Role Behavior in the Chinese Context

Abstract

Existing literature on organizational culture focuses on the strategic fit between a firm's culture values and its technology and task environment. This study, however, emphasizes the diffusion perspective of organizational culture, that organizations often imitate cultures of successful firms to reduce uncertainty, resulting in a homogeneous set of organizational culture values that are considered universally beneficial to organizational functioning. Culture values falling into this category include modern values that emphasize innovation, risk-taking, and change, as opposed to more traditional values that focus on stability and consistency. Using 1958 employees from 50 firms in Taiwan and Mainland China, we developed an organizational culture measure consisting of both modern and traditional organizational culture values. We showed that modern organizational culture values were considered beneficial even by employees with traditional personal values.