CaseSouth Asian Journal ofBusiness and Management Cases4(2) 262–273© 2015 Birla Institute of Management TechnologySAGE Publicationssagepub.in/home.navDOI: 10.1177/2277977915596270http://bmc.
sagepub.comDisclaimer: The authors have developed this case for classroom discussion for programmes in management education,management development and for practicing executives to enhance skills in decision-making. It is not intended to illustrate eithereffective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. It does not represent or endorse the views of the managementabout the issues in the case.
1 School of Business, Centennial College, Toronto, Canada.2 Center for Values-Driven Leadership, Benedictine University, Lisle, USA.Corresponding author:School of Business, Centennial College, Toronto, ON M1K 5E9, Canada.E-mail: [email protected] OrganizationalCulture: ‘Getting the Bossto Work for You’Basil K.C. Chen1Michael R.
Manning2AbstractThis case study explores the organizational culture of a privately held company, Service Express,Inc. (SEI), headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, providing customers with onsite datamaintenance service for mission-critical servers. As of January 2013, it had 250 employees located in24 regional offices in the Midwest and Southeast, generating revenues of around $50 million. SEI’svision is to help its employees achieve their personal, professional and financial goals. The company takesthe position that culture drives performance; in particular, the case details how SEI crafts its culturefor a superior organizational performance; it explores various aspects (e.g.
, service-centric focus,servant leadership) that drive this organization’s culture. It draws reader’s attention to the notionthat organizational performance (including profit) is a lagging indicator, while organizational culture isthe leading indicator of organizational success.KeywordsOrganizational culture, crafting organizational culture, leadership, servant leadership, organizationalperformance, profitIntroductionIt was a beautiful spring morning in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, with flowers in full bloom and birdschirping.
Ron Alvesteffer, President, Service Express, Inc. (SEI), parked his car at the back of theChen and Manning 263company’s empty parking lot. As he turned off the ignition, he recalled fondly a conversation heearlier had with his father, who was then visiting his office along with him.’You are president of the company. How come you don’t have a parking space right up in front thatsays President?’ And I was like, oh dad, that’s so old school. What am I going to tell my employees that I haveto park up close and I have the shortest walk to the door? They’re the ones doing the real heavy lifting duringthe day. They’re doing the work. The closest ones are for ladies here so they can get in and out, and the otherones are for all the front line employees.
I’m way in the back there in the leadership lot. We let everybody elsepark up front. The leaders can walk furthest from there.
1This attitude symbolized the underlying culture of SEI—that of caring for their employees. Ron walkedthe 200 yards to the office building, entered the reception area where he saw the four large glass placards,each portraying one of SEI’s four core objectives (see Figure 1).He had come in early for the special meeting, on completion of 20 years of SEI’s incorporation, withMike McCullough, the owner of SEI. He had promised Mike that his team would present a comprehensiveplan to double the number of employees and generate revenues of $100 million by 2020—this planwould be considered most audacious in the history of SEI.
With his game face on, he slumped into hisfavourite armchair, closed his eyes and mentally went through the presentation he had so diligentlyput together with his chief operating officer (COO) and two vice presidents (VPs)—Dwight Strayer,COO; Kraig Harper, CFO; and Mark Thomas, VP Sales. He was not overly worried about thedetailed financial projections that Kraig Harper and his team had worked out; in fact, he was quiteFigure 1. The SEI WaySource: From SEI’s Chief Financial Officer.264 South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases 4(2)confident on Kraig’s financial model that the goals could be achieved organically (which means noexternal funding requirements). He was, however, concerned about the culture of servant leadershipand the value system of serving the employees and customers that they had so assiduously engendered.
As a relatively small company, it had not been too difficult to drive the ‘big culture’ as he and othersenior team members made personal contact with each employee to inculcate them into the SEI Way.However, with expanded size and geographical dispersion lurked the danger of being spread too thinand hence of diluting the corporate culture. Ron was especially conscious that developing the culturehad required diligent effort, immense patience and at times had led to ‘practice fatigue’. He andthe senior team would now need to guard against such fatigue.
Would they succeed in sustainingand advancing their culture of servant leadership in the expanding organization?SEI Background/HistoryIn 1988, Mike McCullough, a technical graduate, had joined Great Lakes Computers in Grand Rapids,West Michigan, USA, a company specializing in selling refurbished DEC minicomputers, which werethen the highest selling minicomputers. Within a few months of joining the company, Mike recognizedthe business opportunity in ‘servicing’ of the refurbished computers. He persuaded the owners of thecompany to pursue the opportunity as an independent activity. The owners reluctantly agreed andallocated minimal resources for the activity. As a result, SEI was started as a division of the companywith Mike McCullough in charge. By rendering exceptional service to customers, Mike McCullough,with the support of satisfied customers and minimal capital investment, managed to open servicecentres in Detroit and Chicago as well. This greatly increased SEI’s reach and sales.
However, GreatLakes Computers’ hardware business was doing really well too, and it was seeking to become a resellerof DEC computers. At the time DEC was also looking for a reseller in the Michigan area. DECwas willing to sign up with Great Lakes as a reseller, provided it gave up its service activities. As anoutcome of the confluence of opportunities, Mike along with a financial partner bought SEI divisionof Great Lakes Computers which was then incorporated as SEI in 1993 with Mike McCullough asthe President.Mike brought along with him from Great Lakes a handful of colleagues: One in particular, DwightStrayer, has played a significant role in the development of culture at SEI. In 1997, Mark Thomasand Ron Alvesteffer, were hired and another pivotal employee, Kraig Harper, in 1999.
The year 2002represents a major inflection point in SEI’s history. Mike, as the owner, would come into SEI for awhile, stir things up things with new ideas and then he would take off for a few days or even weeks,leaving behind a three-headed management monster—Ron in sales, Dwight Strayer in servicesand Kraig Harper in finance and operations, but none formally in overall charge of the company.This amorphous situation had to come to a head; as Ron explains it:We went in his office, closed the door and I said to him, Mike, you’re an awesome entrepreneur and you startedthis company when nobody else would. I wouldn’t have started it….
You’re great at that. But we’re becoming areal company and we’re growing and expanding and we need systems and development and all that, and that’snot your strength…training and development is my strength. We need somebody in charge. You’re not hereenough. You’re not around enough and when you are it is kind of messing things up. I think you need to leaveand I’ll take over as President. We need somebody to make a decision.
When there’s a tie, there’s no tie-breaker.We all have different ways to do it. You’ve taught me well, and…if I screw it up then you can get rid of me.The outcome: In July 2002, Mike appointed Ron as President of SEI.
Chen and Manning 265Data Centre Maintenance IndustryData centres may run diverse IT applications on hardware from one specific vendor or from differentvendors. Most small- and medium-sized data centres, tiers I and II, generally have a myriad of hardwareand software solutions. Operators of such data centres have three options for service and maintenanceof the hardware: (a) to entrust it to the original equipment manufactures (OEMs) or softwaresuppliers, (b) to contract it to third-party maintenance providers or (c) to undertake it in-house. Forsmall- and medium-sized data centres, in-house maintenance strategy is cost-prohibitive and OEMsare expensive. Therefore, most small- and medium-sized data centres seek a single-point, third-partyservice provider to reduce costs, eliminate finger pointing between the diverse vendors and ensure aconsistent, high-quality service. Third-party data centre maintenance providers can be regional, nationaland transnational—each with concomitant advantages and disadvantages. The agility of responseand lower costs of regional and national service providers as compared to OEM and third-party transnationalservice providers have been the mainstay of regional service providers like the SEI, which istoday a leading data centre maintenance provider in the Midwest USA.
SEI PhilosophySEI’s philosophy is service centric; they believe that if the company looks after their employees’ interest,then they in turn will look after the customer’s interest and profits will follow. This organizational stanceis reflected in SEI’s stated vision, which is to help people achieve their personal, professional andfinancial goals. The founder, Mike McCullough explained it this way:The basics of loving your neighbor and loving one another, and treating people respectfully and caring forthem and being honest and not stealing and all those things, I mean all the biblical values that were shared withme, those were important and I think they’ve had a huge impact in the company and how we function andhow we act. And it may not be labeled that way but I guarantee you that is woven within the structure of ourorganization to carry out those core values and treat people and customers and employees in such a manner thatwe’re expected to.After the Founder’s retirement from active business, senior leadership team at SEI continued to cast andrefine the organizational vision.
They continued providing the organization with focus and diligenceto maintain its culture through the organization’s four core objectives. Those employees who wereclosest to the founder and worked with him, watched and studied his behaviour closely and overtimeimbibed and articulated his service orientation; to use Zig Ziglar’s quote, ‘You can get everything youwant out of life if you just help enough other people get what they want.’ The words of SEI Presidentsum up this philosophy.If I had to describe our culture in one word in what makes us special I think it is service. It goes back to servantleadership. It goes back to serving our customers to servicing each other. Everybody here is so helpful to oneanother and I get that feedback from employees who join us who say after a week I can’t believe the companyI just joined.
I’m going home telling my spouse these people are unbelievable. They’re so nice. They’re friendly.They’re outgoing. They’re offering to help…and we all live the mantra that you can get everything you wantout of life if you help other people get what they want. So I think service is that word.More recently, the President of SEI asserts: ‘The boss actually works for the employees.’ He believesthat a fully engaged work force unleashes creativity and this inculcates superior work ethics266 South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases 4(2)providing customers with service excellence that leads to superior organizational performance,including financial profits.
SEI schedules regular sessions, called ‘Vision Talk’, between an employee and a manager to articulatehis/her goals. Once individual goals are identified, SEI leaders then endeavour to strategize opportunitiesaround employee’s goals. The story of Pieter Winne, presently Manager of Training, TechnicalSupport and Recruiting departments, illustrates the way SEI leaders help people meet their goals.Pieter had joined SEI as a service engineer in 2009. Within 3 months of his tenure, he and his supervisorhad a Vision Talk. He had written down his goals. In his personal goal he had written ‘see everyone of my son’s football games’. It was early Friday afternoon and the first game of the season wasscheduled when Pieter received a phone call from the VP of SEI who said: ‘Hi Pieter, I noticed thaton your vision that you want to see all of your son’s football games.
It’s Friday, and you have a gametonight right?’ Pieter confirmed and the VP asked, ‘When are you going to take off work?’ Pieter repliedthat he would take off at 5 o’clock. The VP said, ‘Pieter, you live over an hour away and if traffic’sbad it could even be worse than that. Why don’t you take off around three, so you can miss the traffic andhave dinner with your family before you go to the game tonight?’ Pieter also noted subsequently thatthe VP had kept track of his son’s games.
The VP had involved himself with a service engineer to helphim realize his personal goal. Such instances have created in the organization a contagious ecosystemof employees helping each other to realize their goals.Four Core ObjectivesSEI employees manage their activities and make their decision guided by the four core objectives; theideas for these objectives were based on Jim Collins’ book, Built to Last (Collins & Porras, 2002). Allemployees are aware that any proposal or any decision by them or by leaders is to be in accordance withthe four core objectives: (1) excellence in customer service, (2) employee engagement, (3) marginretention and (4) revenue growth. The proposal/decision must satisfy all the four core objectives in abalanced manner.
This clarity in decision-making empowers employees, groups and departments towork together in symbiotic synergy (refer to Figure 1).Rigorous Recruitment ProcessSEI has put in place a comprehensive and rigorous recruitment process to ensure culture and valuealignment for each new hire. SEI invests considerable amount of energy and resources in recruitingcandidates who align well with the organization’s culture. SEI has overtime fine-tuned the recruitmentinto a six-stage process: (1) phone interview, (2) chronological interview, (3) ‘ride-along’ with anemployee, (4) final interview, (5) reference checks and (6) the offer.
Overall, the recruiting strategyexplicitly assesses for culture fit, identifies candidate traits and talents, gets to know the candidatesbetter through the ride along, and conducts reference checks to identify strengths and weaknesses. Whennecessary, mis-hires are terminated with dignity. The ‘ride-along’ is a unique stage in the recruitmentprocess. It is a day spent by the candidate on the job shadowing an SEI employee in a relevantposition that affords the candidate opportunity of knowing the job and the company the candidate better.As Pieter Winne explains it:I think the term (ride-along) mostly comes from our—the bulk of our positions here are sales account execs andfield engineers…. Typically about four hours, and they’ll ride with one of our employees…. During that time weChen and Manning 267encourage the candidate to ask questions and have a conversation. Get to know that person who quite franklythey’ll be working with in the future.
Obviously we want people that are a good fit for us but we want to bea good fit for them. It’s a huge commitment. We want them to know this is the right place for them. We want themto see it with the curtains open. We want to show them who we really are….
For the successful candidate, SEI conducts reference checks from former supervisors to assessand drill into the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses that were noticed during the previousinteractions.Effective Performance MeasurementThe organization utilizes an effective performance measurement system called the SR5 to measure andtrack all the variables that are key to employee development and organizational success. The premisehere is ‘what gets measured gets done.’ The purpose of the performance metrics is not to beat peopleup, rather it is to help organizational actors understand what is happening in the organization and helpto devise and or augment strategies to achieve the desirable outcomes. SEI’s SR5 performance measurementsystem stands for Scorecards, ROIs (key Responsibilities, Objectives and Indicators) and FiveFifteens.
Each year, managers and employees at SEI brainstorm together to identify, review and updatemeasures that represent their department’s key performance indicators. They set a monthly goal foreach measure. These scorecards are then put on the company’s intranet so that everyone has a realtimeaccess.
Sharing scorecards internally helps inform and educate departments on all aspects ofthe company’s business and shows how the work of one department affects another. Scorecards helpSEI to identify needs and address them through resources and/or training to help employees achievetheir performance goals.The ROIs are individual measurable job descriptions and every employee in the company hasan ROI. For example, a key responsibility can be revenue; an objective could be contract revenue,hardware revenue and billable or time and material; and indicators are the measurable that tellif the goals have been met. Every employee reviews them with his supervisor/manager on a monthlybasis.
The ROI provide periodic feedback to the employees on their performance. It helps SEIto recognize excellence and also to discern and plan for requisite support and training. All the ROIsfunnel up into the scorecards and they are located on the company’s intranet which is accessibleto all employees.The last is the Five Fifteens, so called as it takes 5 minutes to read and about 15 minutes to prepare.The Five Fifteens create a quarterly personal development plan for every employee that articulates thekey objectives, priorities and vision goals that the employee seeks to focus on and achieve in thenext 90 days. A key element of the process is that employees develop the Five Fifteens in engagementwith their supervisors/managers, which is also known as Vision Talk. While reviewing the FiveFifteens, managers discuss the progress and identify areas where employees need help and inputs/resources to achieve their goals.The performance measurement and tracking system helps the employees not only to understandthe working of the company but also to assess how and in what measure the employee is contributingto advance the core objectives of the company and realize his personal, professional and financial goalsas well.
Personal goals align with team goals that funnel into departmental goals which in turn feedthe four organizational objectives.268 South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases 4(2)SEI CultureCulture of Inspiration, Development and InnovationSEI leadership team intentionally creates and maintains an inspiring organizational culture conducivefor employee development and innovation by sharing company stories and narratives. The seniorteam continually provides inspiration to maintain and sustain the culture by listening to their employeesand staying engaged. As Jessi Sprotte, SEI Marketing and Lead Generation Specialist, puts it: ‘andso when I think about our leadership team it’s continuous, ongoing motivation, momentum, energy,encouragement, high five’s in the hallway’.SEI leadership strives to retain and maintain the company culture by methodically socializing newhires into the ‘SEI Way’ of behaving and conducting business. Following the rigorous hiring process,new employees are strategically inculcated into the SEI Way by (1) new employee on-boarding strategies,(2) formal SEI Way Training and (3) sharing stories and narratives.
When new hires join the company,during their first week they are ‘on-boarded’ where majority of their time is spent on the bigpicture. They visit and meet with every department to see what they do, and how it all fits in, and everyoneworks together. This also sets the stage for future team work. From day one, the new recruits arefirmly engaged and senior leadership sows the seed for lifelong development at SEI.
SEI also conducts official training sessions known as the SEI Way training for new employees, whichis always led by the Executive Leadership Team (Ron Alvesteffer, Dwight Strayer, Kraig Harper andMark Thomas). After 6 months with the company, new hires from across the country attend the SEI Waytraining session at corporate head office. The emphasis is on the history of SEI followed by the narrativesabout SEI culture and employee engagement. The company inspires the employees through narratives,stories, blogs and even an eBook called ‘The SEI Way’ (http://www.seiservice.com/the-sei-waybook.
php) which captures the organization’s philosophy of how it operates. The eBook has impactednot only employees but also potential employees, customers and even competitors. SEI also deployssocial network called Yammer to bridge the geographic divide between employees, who may otherwisenever communicate with each other, to share kudos, give kudos, organize volunteer initiatives and sharephotos of their teams and even their families.Culture of Caring and ServingSenior leaders come with the mindset of serving; they care deeply about employee development andto serve and solve customer’s problems. SEI employees actively seek out what customers need, solvetheir problems and aggressively close deals in the best interest of the customers. Great customer serviceis a passion of all the employees, Bill Smitley, SEI Corporate Recruiter, puts this approach as follows:’our employees are engaged to where they want to help our customers and not just doing a job.
We actually believe we’re changing lives. We’re helping people.’Culture of Employee EngagementSEI believes that an engaged workforce is a productive workforce and accordingly have implementedvarious strategies to deepen employee engagement.
For example, they encourage professional collaborationby leveraging on each other’s core strengths (use of Gallop’s Strength Finders), and haveChen and Manning 269purposeful and deliberate communication strategies. The employee turnover rate has fallen from thehigh of 20 per cent to an average of about 10 per cent (refer to Appendix A). SEI supports andencourages employee professional development and takes the position that by making oneself betterone will become more productive and efficient and the company will stand to benefit. This is veryconcisely articulated by Bill Smitley, SEI Corporate Recruiter, as:They’re asking can you make yourself better, because if you can make yourself better your job will get better.Your production will get better. But to make yourself individually better, personally better, professionally better,to me everything else is behind that and once you’ve achieved that the company…will reap the benefits.All leaders in SEI have an employee engagement budget that allows them to take individuals out to lunchand host department, office or regional social events. SEI also provides paid time off for employees whowant to volunteer for community activity.
It not only meets many of the needs of the employees to servethe community but also tells the communities that SEI cares and appreciates their support.Assessing the SEI CultureTo shed further insight into SEI’s culture, an assessment instrument, such as, the Organizational CultureAssessment Instrument (OCAI) may be used to conceptually evaluate SEI’s cultural profile (Cameron& Quinn, 2011). The OCAI assesses six organizational dimensions: (1) dominant characteristics,(2) organizational leadership, (3) management of employees, (4) organization glue, (5) strategic emphasesand (6) criteria of success. Each dimension has four alternatives called competing values thatcorrespond with the four distinct types of organizational culture termed by Cameron and Quinn (2011)as: ‘clan, hierarchy, market, and adhocracy’. Organization with a clan and hierarchy culture have aninternal focus—clan culture tends to be more flexible and people centric (e.
g., employees and customers),whereas hierarchy culture seek stability and control. On the other end of the spectrum, adhocracy andmarket culture have an external focus—adhocracy culture promotes both flexibility and individuality,whereas market culture values rapid response to competitive positioning.
These four competing values can be mapped on two axes: (1) internal focus and integration versusexternal focus and differentiation and (2) stability and control versus flexibility and discretion. Everyorganization has its own specific combination of these four types of organization cultures which can beplotted on a competing values framework with the four quadrants corresponding to the four culturetypes. Based on extensive interviews and interaction with about 5 per cent of the employees includingthe President, VPs, and employees at various levels performing diverse functions and the Founderperforming a culture assessment of SEI was attempted by the author using Organizational Culture Index(OCI). The result of the assessment is depicted in Figure 2.The diamond-shaped plot (tilting towards the upper/left quadrant) shows that SEI has crafted a highly’Clan’-oriented culture. This type of culture is best suited for knowledge-based service organizations—who have to deal with discerning customers in the IT industry.
In clan culture, knowledge, responsivenessand a positive attitude of the employees are the most valuable firm assets; unlike those needed in amanufacturing organization where capital assets or in a banking organization where market aspects aremore important.This profile also confirms SEI’s concern for people and sensitivity for customers. The ‘hierarchy’category scored higher than both adhocracy and market categories, which reflects the SEI’s adherenceto processes and procedures which have been necessitated owing to its dispersal over 24 branches in270 South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases 4(2)12 states. Given the nature of SEI’s market focus (commoditized service business), its tendency towardsmarket orientation is limited. The adhocracy or the culture of innovation or entrepreneurship is ratherlow in SEI where new ideas or change are mostly top-down, although a few bright new ideas originatingfrom employees have been adopted.This aspect seems relevant in the emerging technological game-changing challenge that ‘cloudcomputing’ would pose to SEI in the time to come. The new ‘cloud computing’ entrant might offer tosmall- and mid-sized data centres, the majority of SEI customers, a new technological option for expansionand modernization without the need to maintain large data storage infrastructure. This could possiblyreduce SEI’s potential to expand and grow as per their projections.
Innovation could possibly providea way out. It is important to bear in mind that the basic purpose of the OCAI is a tool to map the currentculture position with the view of providing guidance to a future (preferred) culture position—there isno ‘best’ culture profile.Figure 2. OCAI for SEISource: Adapted from Cameron and Quinn (2011).Chen and Manning 271Links between Culture and Performance (Profits)Over the decade preceding 2012, SEI averaged an18 per cent sales growth rate (refer to Appendix B),gross profit of 80 per cent due in part to the reduction in inventory and in Contract Cost of Goods(COGS). SEI has a 98 per cent customer retention rate and over 90 per cent net promoter score, whichequals or betters the best in the industry.
Throughout this period SEI managed to maintain an EBITDA(earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), higher than the revenue growth. This issignificant in that SEI has grown the top line without compromising the bottom line.SEI has been a proud awardee of ‘101 Best ; Brightest Companies to work for’ in West Michigan,Atlanta, Metro Detroit, Chicago area each year since 2005; The Alfred P. Sloan Award for BusinessExcellence in Workplace Flexibility (3-year recipient); and Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest growingprivate companies. SEI attributes the key to their success to the employee centric culture. In fact, KraigHarper, CFO, asserts that although he cannot prove it, but he firmly believes that over time there isa positive connection between their company culture and financial returns:I’m very comfortable that the things that we’re doing from a culture perspective and the focus on culture first…rather than on profits first…is really going to lead to our continued success.
And it really leads to us being ableto help our employees accomplish their goals, which again is our vision…so it continues to wrap around ourvision, our four core objectives and it starts with our culture.SEI leadership continues to seek new opportunities to provide grist for employees’ growth. They haverecently set a target of doubling the company’s revenue—100 million dollars by year 2020 which isdriven primarily by the need to fulfil the goals (financial) set by the employees and not the other wayaround.
In the words of SEI President:So our goals for growth in the future are our BHAG as Jim Collins would call it—our big hairy audacious goalis to get to a hundred million dollars in revenue by 2020…. The reason that’s important is we’ve surroundedourselves with these growth-driven oriented people who want to serve and who want opportunities, so in orderto give them the opportunities and help them hit their vision goals we need to continue to grow as a company.ConclusionRon began to reflect on some of the concerns raised by his senior leadership team. Can SEI recruitcandidates with the cultural fit fast enough to fuel the growth? From the sales side, as the territoryspread out farther and farther, how would SEI manage the process without diluting the culture? Thecurrent employee turnover rate is stubbornly stuck at about 10 per cent per year, would the explosivegrowth increase employee turnover? From the financial perspective, if the growth could not be fuelledorganically, will SEI consider external funding?As Ron looked back at his tenure of 15 years at SEI and the journey he had traversed to establish theculture of servant leadership, he could not help but notice that it had not been easy to maintain and raisethe culture bar; for whenever they had lowered the bar the outcome had been disastrous. Admittedly,oftentimes practice fatigue had set in and they had to be extra vigilant and careful to guard against it. Ronrealized that this meeting with Mike had far reaching implications.
It was really about all the 250employees at SEI that looked to him for leadership and support in helping them to continue to actualizethe organizational culture of serving embodied in the shared vision.Source: From Kraig Harper, CFO, SEI.Source: From Kraig Harper, CFO, SEI.
Appendix A: Employee TurnoverAppendix B: Revenue and Employee Growth ; Geographic ExpansionChen and Manning 273Note1. All direct quotes by SEI employees cited in this study are sourced from the interviews the authors conductedduring their site visits to Service Express, Inc. in spring/summer of 2013. The interviews were all conducted inGrand Rapids, Michigan, USA.ReferencesCameron, K.
S., ; Quinn, R.E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture (3rd ed.
). San Francisco,CA: Jossey-Bass.Collins, J.C, ; Porras, J.
I. (2002). Built to last.
New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers Inc.Authors’ Bio-sketchBasil K.C. Chen is Professor of Accounting and Finance at the School of Business, Centennial College,Toronto, Canada. His research interests include positive organization identity; positive organizationscholarship; virtuous organizational practices; value-based leadership; and performance measurements.He received his Ph.
D. in Values Driven Leadership from Benedictine University. He is also a CharteredProfessional Accountant (CPA) and an alumnus of Wilfrid Laurier University where he completedhis graduate degree in business (MBA). Prior to his appointment at Centennial College, he held leadershipand management position with both private and public companies that encompass controllership,market management and operations.
Michael R. Manning is Professor of Leadership, Strategy & Change at the Center for Values DrivenLeadership, Benedictine University, Lisle, IL, USA. He currently serves as an associate editor of theJournal of Applied Behavioral Science and is active in the Academy of Management, where he is aformer Chair of the Organization Development and Change Division. His research interests includetopics related to the management of change (whole systems change using large group interventions, therole of affect and emotion in change, identifying change moments); leading and collective action;occupational stress and well-being.
