The Culture of Australian organizations and its relation with strategy

This study uses the Organizational Culture Profile of OReilly et al. (1991), as adapted by Windsor and Ashkanasy (1996), to describe the culture of Australian organizations, as perceived by financial controllers. The study also examines the relation between organizational culture and strategy, and whether culture varies between service and manufacturing industries. Our results generally corroborate Sarros et al. (2002), with outcome orientation and respect for people perceived as the most prominent characteristics of Australian organizations culture, and innovation the least prominent. The consistency of results using a different managerial sample and a different measure of culture to Sarros et al. (2002) suggests robustness of the descriptions of Australian organizations culture. Our results support the importance of aligning organizational culture with strategy. We find no differences in the culture of service and manufacturing industries.