Measuring organizational culture: An empirical assessment of the hofstede questionnaire in a Mongolian setting

Abstract

While it has become common practice to measure organizational culture quantitatively, its applicability is seldom questioned nor investigated. This empirical study shows, how one of the most frequently used questionnaires (Hofstede et al. 1990), can only be partly replicated in a Mongolian setting using a translated version of the Hofstede et al. (1990) questionnaire. Quantitative data was collected and analyzed accordingly, using common statistical procedures, such as factor analysis and Cronbach alpha measures. The sample consists of 1106 Mongolian employees in three service sectors. The service sectors are mobile communications service, banking sector and education sector. This study shows that Hofstede et al.’s (1990) questionnaire can only partly be replicated in a Mongolian setting. Data was only collected and interpreted in a Mongolian context. We propose that future research should focus on matching dimensions approaches to organizational culture with other existing models, e.g. Schein (1985), Hatch & Cunliffe (2006), Dauber et al. (2010).