A critical analysis of the development of a culture measurement framework within a public organisation in the Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract

Organisational culture, understood as the interplay of shared assumptions, espoused values, and observable practices, plays a significant role in shaping behaviour and influencing organisational performance. Although frequently regarded as difficult to quantify, culture can be meaningfully examined through theoretically grounded and methodologically robust approaches. In the public organisation (PO) examined in this study, culture had historically been assessed through a single-index, values-based survey focused primarily on espoused values. While useful for awareness-raising, this approach offered limited insight into behavioural enactment, underlying assumptions, or the implications of cultural misalignment for service delivery. As organisational culture increasingly emerged as a cross-cutting influence on strategic execution, performance, and citizen outcomes, the need for a more integrative and diagnostic measurement approach became evident. The aim of this study was to adapt existing organisational culture measurement approaches, informed by Schein’s three-layer model, to the public-sector context; to integrate these adapted elements into a Culture Measurement Framework (CMF); and subsequently to test the resulting framework using multiple sources of organisational evidence within a Western Cape PO. Drawing on Schein’s three-level model of organisational culture, the framework was operationalised through data triangulation across employee experience (EX), organisational performance indicators (PI), and citizen experience (CX), with the intention of supporting evidence-informed cultural alignment.