I have just read Robert's response......

Finding out the "why" is the basis of Value Laddering and the basis of
uncovering organisational culture. Finding out the "how" completes the picture
and reveals the acts, behaviors, symbols, environments, and situations people
might approach and avoid in order to live according to their values (culture of
shared values).

Robin


-----Original Message-----
From: RepGrid@yahoogroups.com on behalf of Robert Wright [MM]
Sent: Sat 12/16/2006 6:20 AM
To: RepGrid@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [RepGrid] RepGrids for Elicitation of Corporate Culture

Hi Jeannette,
here's my view before going to sleep (it's 1am now) so please excuse the
brief reply:

I'm intrigued with your study, but why are would you be interested in
the "how" of the way people communicate / share knowledge in an
organization's culture. For me, I would be focusing the grid on "why"
people share information (and for some and under what situations, others
do not share). This might perhaps give you a higher values approach to
your elicitation (and perhaps even using a qualifying questions that
focus the grid interview on '...in terms of why....')(hmmm).

I think you don't want to know "how" people share
information.......because I think we would know how it's basically done
in organizations...hence the constructs you got.

As to your elements perhaps focus your grid on inside the company....the
outside bit can be a separate study. Now this becomes more clear. If
inside, then you have a lot of possible elements to play with
(indviduals, events, situations...). I think knowing the firm your want
to investigate (the type of and the type of employees it has) may give
you more insights on what elements you should be using (supplied or
elicited).

The culture literature may also give you insights on what key areas are
talked about, researched about, when talking about culture; even looking
into the knoweledge sharing culture research papres and what do they
talk about; these will give you more evidence on how comfortable you
will be with your elements for construct elicitation.

well hope that helps to stimulate your senses.
kindly
robert


-----------------------------------------------
Dr. Robert Wright, FAIM, FHKIHRM, FHKIoD
Assistant Professor
Department of Management and Marketing
9/F Li Ka Shing Tower
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Tel.: (852) 2766-7378
Fax: (852) 2765-0611
>>> jeannette@... 12/15/06 5:58 PM >>>
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).

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
* 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).

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.

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?

Any ideas, feedback, comments are cordially welcome.

Jeannette Hemmecke

___________________________________
Jeannette Hemmecke
Psychologist

University of Linz
Department for Communications Engineering
Freistaedter Str. 315
4040 Linz
Austria

mailto:jeannette.hemmecke@...
http://www.ce.jku.at
...................................
Competence Centre for Knowledge Management
http://wissen.ce.jku.at
...................................
Private
mailto:jeannette@...
http://www.hemmecke.de/jeannette
___________________________________





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