Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENTS 1

Organizational Assessments: Internal and External Value Focused Tools

Tyler L. Jackson

Park Unviersity
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Abstract

 This research detailed two organizational assessment tools that focused

specifically on organizational values. The Business Needs Scorecard (BNS)

assessed organizational values from an internal perspective where as the

Customer Value Assessment tool looked at the values shared by external

stakeholders. These tools sit amongst a backdrop of organizational change

initiatives starting with business culture models late 20th century to a now global

economy concept were organizational members seek more interconnection with

society at large. 

 
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Introduction

Assessment tools offer organizations the ability to gain new insights,

formulate strategies for improvement, and communicate future desired states of

being to both itself, its people and other external organizations. Dr. Edgar Schien

(1990) defines culture as:

Culture is what a group learns over a period of time as that group solves

its problems of survival in an external environment and its problems of

internal integration. Such learning is simultaneously a behavioral,

cognitive, and emotional process. Extrapolating further from a

functionalist anthropological view, the deepest level of culture will be the

cognitive in that the perceptions, language, and thought processes that a

group comes to share will be the ultimate causal determinant of feelings,

attitudes, espoused values, and overt behavior. (p. 111)

It is important to note that culture is learned over time, and is not easily

transferred. Individuals import norms, values, and beliefs from previous

organizations to their new group, which can get adopted over time. This means

that organizational change can be very difficult in practice, as well as keeping an

organization on track towards a desired end-state. Lastly, it is not readily

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obvious on how organizational values change. Does it require individual change

first, or organizational change to evolve the individual’s values? 

Regardless, any effort to develop positive change within an organization

becomes all the more difficult if an organization does not understand what

needs to be changed to begin with. 

Background

In the later part of the 1980s and early 1990s, Western businesses

seemed to settle in a transformational period from late-stage agrarian societies to

peak service economies. A boom in consumer goods that the world hadn't seen

since the late industrial revolution proved businesses were at their height

concerning manufacturing and production. It had seemed that Abraham Maslow’s

behaviorist influence had run its course. Systems and processes were

streamlined and employee wealth had increased like never before. All but the

“self-actualization” phase of psychological development was not attended to as

this was seen as personally unique to each person, and therefore not within the

purview business. Still, the top tier businesses looked for ways to increase their

own efficiency as a competitive edge. Many still believed that more could be

done to increase the productivity of its own people. 

At the same time, Dr. Edgar Schien, a professor at MITs’ school of

management, was looking at organizational culture through a deliberate study,

focused on underlying assumptions, values, norms and behaviors found within

business organizations (Schein, 1990). Culture organization, he argued, was an

amalgamation of the processes groups took in coping with and solving problems
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that they felt were important enough to teach to new members (Schein, 1990).

From his early work Schien codified three levels of organizational culture;

artifacts and behaviors, espoused values, and assumptions (Schein, 1990). 

Businesses started to look at those underlying assumptions about what

they thought their people needed and wanted in a day-to-day operation.

Employee surveying began to take place in support of what was forming into

more broadly as “employee engagement” (Kahn, 1990). As a result, much more

emphasis was placed on time off and benefits packages that were used as

incentives for performance. This trend continued until the early 2000’s.

Employees still wanted more from their employment and time off was no longer

the largest concern espoused by employees as people began to see the

interconnectedness of the new global economy taking shape. 

Enter Richard Barrett, British author and founder of Barrett Value Centre.

Richard Barrett developed a seven level model of consciousness that has widely

influenced how organizations view themselves. Expanding on Maslow's hierarchy

of needs, Barrett detailed several ways in which individuals interact as they move

towards the super ordinate goals in their lives (Giacalone & Jurkiewicz, 2016). 

Later Barrett developed an organizational category along with a

society/community category to create a three-factor model that enabled

organizations to view the complex interaction between itself, its people, and its

environment. Terms like “stakeholder” were expanding organizational views on

the interrelationship between a business and those people and organizations that

influence it (Pfeffer, 2001). Many businesses were looking to separate

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themselves from their competitors asking, “what more can we offer to our

clients?”

The Barrett model took the values component of ideals of a business with

the behavioral component of actual actions taken by the leaders and its people,

as well as the internal culture as perceived by those members to develop an

organizational index. 

According to Barrett, this index is comprised of six categories: Finance,

fitness, external relations, evolution, culture and contribution to society. Finance

focuses on the resources needed for stability and growth. Without funds

organizations fade away. Organizations that struggle with finance often witness

leaders act out in fears about their survival needs. Fitness looks at the

effectiveness of delivering on agreements, and performance of individuals within

the organization. External relations assess how well the organization builds and

maintains relationships with external stakeholders and clients. Evolution rates

how well the organization can change and adapt to the future, specifically in

regards to the internal members creativity and innovation. Culture dissects the

organizations factors that impact trust, direction, communication, and support

within the organization to enable those core attributes. Contribution to society

measures the attributes that support the connection between the organizations

people and their connections with larger organizations that promote those

individuals well being. 

Dr. Schein’s contributions laid the foundation on what to orient on in terms

of organizational culture. Shining a light on an important aspect of human

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organizations. Richard Barrett then expanded on Schiens work, which, in time

has widely influenced many of the cultural assessment tools. 

Business Needs Scorecard

The Business Needs Scorecard, or BNS, is a subset of cultural values

assessments that exists to help an organization align their values with their

actions. The BNS is a gap analysis tool developed from the perspectives of an

organization's leaders, detailing both current and desired organizational

attributes. It is a comprehensive assessment, meaning that other foundational

surveys must be undertaken as inputs into the BNS. 

This framework can provide organizations with a lens to view their current

cultural attributes in relation to their desired cultural attributes. After measuring

each of the six aspects that Barrett laid out, participants then conduct an analysis

of the features that do not match up with the desired end state. This assessment

is important in order to understand organizational culture values from the

perspective of the organizations leadership. Once completed the analysis gives

the organization a gap in culture from which strategies can then be developed to

address those shortcomings.

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(Figure 1. Barrett Values Centre, 2019)

Customer Value Assessment 

The Customer Value Assessment focuses on the relative value between

the organization and an external stakeholder. This assessment is an

informational analysis tool that seeks to generalize new information from an

external perspective from the organization. These types of assessments can

articulate the relationship that an external stakeholder has with any given

organizations culture, how they view that culture and whether that culture is

serving the stakeholders wants, needs and expectations. 

The Barrett example compares the personal values from the external

stakeholder with the organization in questions current and desired cultural

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values. Then matches up the overlapping areas along Barrett’s consciousness

model to show to what level of fidelity the two organizations match. From there

the assessment derives an “entropy” value that attempts to measure the rate of

change between the two organizations. Finally the areas that do not overlap can

bring insight to the organization being assessed through the external

stakeholders espoused values and desires. 

(Figure 2. Barrett Values Centre, 2019)

Analysis
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Several key characteristics are shared by both the business needs

scorecard and the customer value assessment. 

First, both models explicitly define the organizations espoused cultural

values. This value is used as a view of the current situation, an expected reality.

They also define the expressed value that either the external stakeholder has of

the organization, or the value expressed by the employee’s or organizational

members, not including leadership. This factor enables the leadership of an

organization to see the gap between what they say and think with what the key

relationships see and think about those espoused values. Without both of these

concepts a “gap” would not emerge. 

Second, both models ask leadership to make a determination on what

values they would like to sure up in order to meet their espoused values with

action. This creates goals in both cases that can enable those leaders with

targets to hit in the future. Strategies can then be developed for achieving those

goals giving leadership the topics from which to communicate with their

stakeholders. 

Third, both assessment tools use Barrett’s consciousness model to

communicate to the organization what levels their own actual culture matches up

with what they espouse to be true. The levels of consciousness then become a

frame of references for communication between the leaders and stakeholders of

the organization. It also has a secondary function of pinpointing negative leader

actions as a way of reverse engineering what could be the source of the

problems causing the mismatch between reality and the desired value end-state. 
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In addition to the similarities between both assessment tools, the BNS and

Customer Value assessment differ on several key points. 

The BNS looks at multiple factors of an organization, where as the

Customer Value Assessment only looks at the values aspect within an

organizational culture. This key difference is important as one is looking at the

organization in breadth versus depth. The BNS is more of a 360 degree view of

the organization, that also pulls in the values aspect of a culture, thereby

enabling its leaders to better understand what factors may be pushing and pulling

against those cultural aspects. 

Additionally, the BNS may have several categories that are not assessed

or are missing key information in order to illustrate that the organization has

factors that were not previously addressed that may need to be. Organizations

can suffer from unknowns that cannot be addressed until light is shed on them. It

is important to note that not all of these factors may apply to every organization

as each organization is developed with different organizational objectives. 

Lastly, neither are complete pictures of an entire organizational process.

In this case these models only focus on the “what” questions and do not suggest

the how. While these are critically important, sometimes organizations may

choose to tackle the right things, but attempt to fix them in an in-efficient way.

The goal should be to find the right problem and marry them with the right

solutions, efficiency versus effectiveness. This often requires the insight into the

“why” question that neither models of assessment address. 

Recommendations
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It is recommended that both tools of formal assessment covered be used

in concert with several other informal internal methods of assessments such as

individual assessments from each group member, peer feedback as well as

group processes of deliberate reflection and knowledge capturing that enables

systematic enculturalization of lessons learned. These informal methods can be

brought to leverage during formal assessment periods. These bottom-up

collection efforts thrive on candid observations and feedback that may not be

able to be developed through formal methods. 

Recording lessons learned can be an effective means of soliciting bottom

up feedback from group members. Something as simple as leaders asking for a

few items to improve for future work can enable not only direct change within

systems but can solicit buy in for next time that problem arises. 

Finally developing a knowledge management system that enables

organizational members the ability to research and find organizational lessons

that have already been recorded for future work. Too often organizational change

can outpace its own knowledge development, leaving those lines of effort that

were focused on values to be restarted with new members and leaders. To

prevent this turn over of effort, organizations have invested in knowledge

management systems to store and transfer hard earned knowledge about

clients,decisions, and best practices. These repositories of organizational

knowledge can serve to save time by providing a central location for efficient

searches of valuable lessons learned.

Conclusion
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Organizations must be willing to have open and frank discussions,

especially concerning mistakes. Many times leaders are not willing to share

those mistakes throughout an organization in an act of saving face. If

organizations are to create a healthy culture that encourages learning, leaders

must create a culture that avoids direct blaming, focusing instead on the

alignment of organizational goals with values in conjunction with measures of

effectiveness. Using Barrett’s consciousness model gives organizations the

framework to discuss our mismatches between what is our current reality with

what we desire to be true in terms of lived organizational values. Finally these

two organizational assessment tools, the Business Needs Scorecard and the  

Customer Value Assessment focus on values both internally and externally to the

organization. These tools can provide keen insight into the reality of

organizational perceptions that might otherwise be overlooked. 

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References

Figure 1, Example business needs scorecard. Your Organisation, Thriving.

(2019). Retrieved from https://www.valuescentre.com/.

Figure 2, Customer Value Assessment Your Organisation, Thriving. (2019).

Retrieved from https://www.valuescentre.com/.

Giacalone, R. A., & Jurkiewicz, C. L. (2016). Handbook of workplace spirituality

and organizational performance. London: Routledge.

Kahn, William A (1990). "Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and

Disengagement at Work". Academy of Management Journal. 33 (4): 692–724.

doi:10.2307/256287.

Pfeffer, J. (2001). Business and the spirit: management practices that sustain

values. Stanford, CA: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.

Schein, E. H. (1990). Organizational culture. American Psychologist, 45(2), 109–

119. doi: 10.1037//0003-066x.45.2.109