Jeannette,
At Friday 04:58 AM 12/15/2006, you wrote:

>Dear all,
>
>I intent to use Repertory Grids in order to elicit the corporate culture
>of a firm. I am especially interested in those cultural values that
>explain the way how the employees communicate and share their knowledge
>(knowledge sharing-culture).

This is an interesting and challenging area of research which I've also
explored. A good deal of related work is being done in the aircraft
industry by a variety of organizations such as NTSB, NASA (Ames Research
Center), FAA, and several Universities in Florida, USA.

>I thought of using situations where the interviewee experienced
>knowledge sharing/communication within the firm and some situations from
>outside the firm as elements for the grid. For the elicitation of the
>situations within the firm I would ask the interviewee to think of a
>wide range of situations:
>* typical situations and atypical (unexpected positive or negative
>outcome) situations

Normal flights and emergencies.

>* and of situations where knowledge sharing happened (or not) between
>people of 1) the same hierarchical level (colleagues) or of 2) different
>hierarchical levels (superior-subordinate) and 3) between people from
>within the company with people from outside the company (communications
>with customers, suppliers, partners).

Knowledge, models and value sharing among cockpit crews, cabin crews,
maintenance and Air Traffic Controllers is a critical area of research,
especially in analyzing and avoiding air disasters.


>In my try-out, it was sometimes difficult to gather situations from
>outside the firm, because some people did only work in this firm and
>have no former experience in other firms (or the concreteness of the
>experience is lacking because they left the former firm 10 years ago),
>and private situations are sometimes too private to include them in a
>study of corporate culture.
>
>I tried that procedure out, but the constructs I got were not very
>satisfying, because they were not on the level of cultural values.
>Examples of constructs in the try-out are:
>* formal versus informal communication,
>* face-to-face situation versus written document,
>* two people involved versus more people involved... etc.

One of the biggest steps forward in US airspace is:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Aviation Safety Reporting System, or ASRS, is a voluntary system that
allows pilots and other airplane crew members to confidentially report near
misses and close calls in the interest of improving
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Air_safety>air safety. The confidential
and independent nature of the ASRS is key to its success, since reporters
do not have to worry about any possible negative consequences of coming
forward with safety problems. The ASRS is run by
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/NASA>NASA, a neutral party, since it
has no power in enforcement. The success of the system serves as a positive
example that is often used as a model by other industries seeking to make
improvements in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Safety>safety.

Getting open honest answers can be as challenging in business...

>I don't have the feeling that I get nearer to culture by analysing those
>constructs. (Of course the situations themselves give me already some
>hints, but I would like to try to get deeper into the underlying values
>level of culture.)
>
>Do you have any ideas, comments on the procedure? Any suggestions what
>could be changed in order to get answers (constructs) that describe the
>knowledge-sharing-culture of the firm?

I have found that the Laddering procedure yields more useful information
about the true culture of an organization. Profitability vs Safety is more
often, in my opinion, a laddering value decision, than a lateral
cost/benefit analysis.

>Any ideas, feedback, comments are cordially welcome.

Above are some immediate ideas, I'll be interested in what you discover.

Bob

Knowledge is NOT enough!
Knowledge + Confidence enables Action.
Vision + Action = Leadership!
- Bob Gorman
http://www.kncell.org


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