Organizational Culture Test

The Organizational Culture Test is a rigorous, research-informed diagnostic tool designed to reveal the underlying cultural logic of organizations. While companies differ widely in size, industry, ownership structure, and national context, comparative management research has consistently shown that they tend to organize work, authority, and meaning in a limited number of recurring cultural forms. These forms shape how decisions are made, how power is exercised, how people are motivated, and how conflict is resolved—often more strongly than formal strategy or organizational charts suggest.

This framework originates in the work of Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner, whose research on culture and management spans several decades. Beginning in the late 1980s, they conducted large-scale surveys and interviews with managers and professionals across more than 50 countries. Their aim was not to catalog national stereotypes, but to understand how people inside organizations interpret hierarchy, rules, relationships, individuality, and task responsibility in everyday working life. The result was a comparative, empirically grounded view of organizational culture that cut across industries and borders.

These studies relied on thousands of structured interviews, dilemma-based questionnaires, and cross-national comparisons. Participants were presented with concrete workplace scenarios—such as conflicts between rules and personal obligations, or tensions between individual creativity and collective goals—and asked how they would respond. By aggregating and analyzing these responses, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner were able to identify systematic patterns in how organizations function, rather than relying on anecdotal observations or managerial folklore.

From this empirical base emerged four recurring organizational culture models: Eiffel Tower, Family, Incubator, and Guided Missile. Each represents a distinct way of organizing authority, coordinating work, and assigning meaning to roles. Across countries and sectors, organizations tended to cluster around these models with striking consistency.

For example, organizations that emphasize clearly defined roles, formal procedures, and impersonal authority repeatedly aligned with the Eiffel Tower model. In contrast, firms structured around strong personal loyalty, hierarchical yet paternal leadership, and informal coordination clustered as Family cultures. Highly creative, individual-centered environments—often found in startups, research labs, or artistic fields—aligned with the Incubator model. Meanwhile, organizations focused on projects, expertise, and measurable outcomes consistently converged around the Guided Missile type.

The Organizational Culture Test distills these research findings into a concise and structured assessment. Each of the 32 questions reflects behaviors, norms, and assumptions that empirical research has shown to be strongly associated with one of the four cultural models. Respondents answer using simple yes-or-no judgments based on their lived experience of a specific organization, team, or workplace, allowing the underlying cultural pattern to emerge through aggregation rather than intuition.

Although presented in an accessible quiz format, the test reflects a serious analytical insight: organizational culture is not abstract, symbolic, or purely subjective. It is measurable, patterned, and deeply influential in shaping how people work, lead, collaborate, and respond to change. By making these patterns visible, the Organizational Culture Test offers a practical entry point into understanding the often-unspoken rules that govern organizational life.

References

• Trompenaars, F., & Hampden-Turner, C. (2012). Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business. McGraw-Hill.
• Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. McGraw-Hill.
• Schneider, B., Ehrhart, M. G., & Macey, W. H. (2013). Organizational climate and culture. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 361–388.