Organizational Culture and Community College Performance: An Analysis of Washington State's Community and Technical College System

The relationship between organizational culture and the performance of community colleges is poorly understood, with scarce empirical research on the subject. This study examined this relationship through a scenario-based survey, the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument, administered at 27 community and technical colleges in Washington State. Each institution’s dominant culture type (clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, or market), the strength of its organizational culture, and its cultural congruence were identified to assess variation within the state system and determine if there were meaningful relationships between culture type, strength, congruence, and performance. To assess institutional performance, student-level records (n=28,499) for a three-year period (2016-2019) were used to measure the completion of certificates, degrees, and transfer to a four-year institution. A multi-level model was used to account for the effects of student-level characteristics and institution-level characteristics that contribute to variation in performance amongst colleges. An input-adjusted completion indicator derived from the multi-level model was used in descriptive and inferential analyses that assessed the relationship between organizational culture and institutional performance. Results from the assessment of organizational culture indicate substantial variation in culture type, culture strength, and cultural congruence across the sample of institutions. Descriptive findings indicate that colleges with incongruent organizational cultures outperformed colleges with congruent cultures, while colleges assessed with dominant hierarchy culture-types outperformed colleges assessed with dominant clan culture-types. Inferential analyses suggest a negative relationship between the relative strength of a college’s organizational culture and its performance and a positive relationship between a college’s market culture-type orientation and its performance. Potential implications for higher education management and future research are discussed