Which MBA culture is your best fit?

Structured vs. Flexible organization

This dimension measures comfortable structuredness within the business school as an organization, revealing how faculty, administration, and students tend to deal with unknown potential situations.

To what extent faculty, staff, and students feel appropriate to establish and follow rules and procedures? How tolerable is leaving freedom to find their own way instead? Formal processes, and established procedures are characteristics of a more structured environment. In a more flexible organization, people have fewer generalized guidelines and embrace spontaneity.

In organizational theory, this concept is referred to as Uncertainty Avoidance.

For example, a structured environment would emphasize clarity, order and rules, while a flexible structure encourages adaptability and individual variation in the behavioral responses to one and the same situation.

Explicit vs. Intuitive communication

This dimension is a measure of the communication preferences within the organizational practices: explicit and detailed vs. subtle and context-dependent. It reveals some characteristics of the communication style in a particular business school community. To what extent is communication precise and clearly expressed? If greatly so, then the environment is one that embraces explicit communication. On the other hand, if communication tends to be subtler, allowing room for interpretation depending on context, the environment is one of intuitive communication and will require more interpretation from individual members.

In organizational theory terms, this scale evaluates Low vs. High Context.

In an explicit environment, for example, class assignments are written in great detail so that students clearly understand everything that may be expected of them.

Personal Contribution vs. Collective Accomplishment

This dimension measures the degree to which organizational practices support the collective interest and a cooperative course of action, as well as the immersion of individuals in the group identity. It characterizes the extent to which the business school enables members of its community to position themselves and achieve success, and it reveals how much the organization encourages individual achievements vs. collaboration. Certain environments will value group over individual recognition, while others will recognize individual merit in addition to—or more than—group achievement.

The corresponding concept in organizational theory is Individualism vs. Collectivism.

For example, in a culture of team spirit, the learning and achievement of the class is stressed over the performance of any single individual.

Long-term vs. Ad Hoc orientation

This dimension offers insight into the extent to which individuals are encouraged to engage in future-oriented behaviors such as planning and investing in the future. How does the business school community expect its members to relate to the future in order to achieve the desired results? To what extent does the community value investing time and energy in advance planning? When it does, this is an environment with a long-term orientation. One that tends to act according to the current situation has a greater ad-hoc orientation.

This concept in organizational theory is referred to as Future Orientation.

For instance, in an environment with long-term orientation, the accepted norm is that one plans ahead to be successful.

Formal vs. Informal Relationships

This measure reveals the acceptable degree of inequality practices based on the formal roles of the organizational members, such as students and professors. What is the acceptable degree of formality between roles? How does the community expect relationships between members to be initiated and conducted? In more official organizations, the relationship between a student and professor is more formal, with greater distance. In organizations with friendly organizations, less-formal communication and role expectations may be found between professors and students.

In organizational theory, this dimension measures the Power Distance in a culture.

In a friendly environment, for example, a student may contact a professor via email or in person at any time of the day, while in a formal environment, an appointment for office hours may be the norm.

Liberal vs. Classical Style

This dimension unveils the degree to which members of the business school community follow role-defined etiquette, established traditions on behavior and conduct, and a common style. A classical style is based on established etiquette, while a liberal style may have evolving traditions and more acceptance for a range of individual conduct.

Sample question:
Agree or disagree: It is acceptable for a professor to come to class dressed in a t-shirt.