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Vallett, Carol

College of Education and Social Services

2008

Ed. D.

In contemporary life, organizations are how society accomplishes what individuals cannot (Hall & Tolbert, 2005). People spend significant parts of their lives as members of various organizations as employees, patients, students or citizens and consequently organizations have taken on increasing importance in the world. Recently the field of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) has emerged as a new frame for analyzing organizations using a strengths perspective and empirical methods. In particular, organizational virtuousness, the manifestation of virtues within an organization, has been a focus of study. Organizational virtuousness, conceptualized as virtues iuch as compassion, optimism, and tsust, has been studied by Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn (2003a) and found to be positively correlated with business performance. Organizational culture provides another frame for organizational analysis. Organizational culture refers to the unseen rules and basic assumptions that govern how an organization operates (Ouchi & Wilkins, 1985). This quantitative study examined relationships between organizational virtuousness and organizational culture in two university Continuing Education units. A survey instrument, based on the Survey of Organizational Virtuousness (Cameron et al, 2003) and the Competing Values Organizational Culture framework (Quinn & Spreitzer, 1991) was administered online. Results revealed that the Survey of Organizational Virtuousness was a valid and reliable instrument for use with a higher education audience. The virtue factors that emerged were benevolence, profound purpose, compassion, optimism, joy and integrity. These two case studies demonstrated a significant difference among groups of individuals in both perceived culture type and organizational virtuousness between the two institutions. Additionally, all virtue factors were highly correlated with one specific type of organizational culture. These results suggest organizational virtuousness as a useful lens for organizational analysis in a higher education setting. Furthermore, this study extends the concept of organizational virtuousness to organizational culture. Suggestions are offered for further research to analyze the strength and direction of this relationship in addition to suggestions for fostering virtuousness.