How is culture actually exhibited in organizations? The issues we will address are the strength or weakness of the organization’s culture and the identification of an organization’s culture. Three features that determine a culture’s strength can be identified. The first is thickness of culture, measured by the number of important shared assumptions. Thick cultures have many such assumptions, thin cultures few. The second dimension is extent of sharing. In strong cultures, layers and layers of beliefs are shared. Clarity of ordering is the third determinant of cultural strength. At McDonald’s, product quality and customer service are clearly the highest priorities, but the two goals appear to be equally important. In some cultures, shared beliefs and values are clearly ordered, and their importance in relation to one another is known. Strength of culture is significant because strong cultures—that is, thick cultures in which the sharing of clearly ordered beliefs and values is pervasive—are more resistant to change than are weak cultures.

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Eric Raymond

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