Established model
The competing values framework
Robert E. Quinn & John Rohrbaugh; applied to culture by Kim S. Cameron & Robert E. Quinn · 1983
Organisations trade off flexibility against control and an inward focus against an outward one, and their cultures reflect where they have settled.
Its place in the frameworkVision Core›Culture
What it does
Crossing the two tensions gives four broad types of culture — one built around collaboration, one around creativity, one around competition for results and one around control and order. The name carries the point: the values compete, every organisation leans towards some of them, and the strengths of each type are also its blind spots.
- Reach for it when
- When describing an existing culture in comparable terms, and when a change in strategy will need values the current culture tends to suppress.
- Where it stops
- Four types simplify a great deal, and a survey-based profile can make culture look more measurable than it is. It describes the balance; it does not say which balance is right.
Robert E. Quinn & John Rohrbaugh, “A Spatial Model of Effectiveness Criteria”, Management Science, 1983; Kim S. Cameron & Robert E. Quinn, Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture, Addison-Wesley, 1999.
Why it sits at Culture
Who the organisation actually is when nobody is writing it down: the shared assumptions, norms and habits that decide how people behave when no rule tells them what to do.
A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:
- Levels of cultureEdgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (1985): artefacts, espoused beliefs and values, and basic underlying assumptions.
- Reading itKim S. Cameron & Robert E. Quinn, Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture (1999); Joanne Martin, Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (1992); Steven Kerr, “On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B” (1975).
- How it is passed onJohn Van Maanen & Edgar H. Schein, “Toward a Theory of Organizational Socialization” (1979); Terrence E. Deal & Allan A. Kennedy, Corporate Cultures (1982), on rites, rituals and stories.
- Shaping itSchein (1985) on primary and secondary embedding mechanisms; John P. Kotter & James L. Heskett, Corporate Culture and Performance (1992).
What it touches elsewhere
Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Culture lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.
- Core valuesThe stated commitments the organisation will not trade are held in Purpose → Core values. Culture is read against them here and never restated.
- IntegrityThe gap between the stated purpose and the enacted one is measured in Purpose → Integrity. Culture supplies much of its evidence, but the gap has its home there.
- Brand valuesValues as expressed outward belong to Brand Identity → Brand values. A lived culture that contradicts them is what customers eventually meet.
- Brand NarrativeThe story told outward lives in the Brand Narrative. The stories told internally about how people behave are a transmission mechanism and stay here.
- OrganisationFormal structure, decision rights, leadership roles and change adoption sit in Organisation. Culture is the informal pattern that structure runs on.
- HRRecruitment, development and retention sit in HR, including any culture-fit criterion in selection. This object describes the culture; HR decides how to assess for it.
- Year WheelThe dates of recurring rituals belong on the Year Wheel. What those occasions signal, and whether they have drifted, is recorded here.
Filed at the same place
These answer questions that arise at Culture too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.
- Schein’s three levels of cultureCulture lives on three levels: what can be seen, what is said to be valued, and what is taken for granted without being said.
Elsewhere in Vision Core
These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.
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