Rapid appraisal of organizational cultures: a challenge for field work

Research into organizational culture is considered, starting by spelling out deficits in current and past research. It moves on to look at what is meant by culture, and tackles issues such as research in the field, with regard to what it terms 'rapid organizational research'. Both classical and rapid organizational appraisal have a number of problems associated with them; the paper suggests ways in which these can be overcome. It is concluded, that broadly speaking, field research methods can be applied to surveying organisational cultures. It also notes that a rapid approach to organisational surveying is a viable and less time-consuming alternative to a more long term classical approach.