Development and validation of an organizational cultural measure in social welfare settings

Abstract

Organizational culture refers to the norms, beliefs, and values imbedded in an organization that may profoundly affect various working outcomes of the organization. Due to a lack of well-validated measures of organizational culture in social welfare settings, organizational cultural research conducted in social work and social service is scarce. The main purpose of this study is to develop and validate an organizational culture measure, Organizational Culture Scale in Social Welfare (OCS-SW), for use in social work and social service research. The study is based on a total sample of 891 practitioners in a major and well-established social welfare organization in Hong Kong. OCS-SW contains five cultural aspects: a) service mission and values, b) management and leadership, c) professional development and training, d) working conditions and environment, and e) teamwork and relations. The five cultural aspects of OCS-SW were empirically confirmed to load on an overall organizational culture of social welfare from the results of Rasch modeling, supporting its construct validity. In addition, the adequate internal reliability, concurrent validity, criterion validity, and predictive validity of OCS-SW and its subscales were well supported in subsequent analyses. The current study confirmed that OCS-SW has practical utility in assessing organizational culture in social work and social service research. Study limitations and future research are discussed.