Predominant culture and subcultures

The Go Galápagos Company study through the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical academic work that had as a study model the Scoring the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument proposed by Cameron and Quinn. It aims to account for the state of corporate culture in the Ecuadorian company Go Galápagos, in order to identify which is the predominant culture and also spot the existence of subcultures within the organization. The study follows the premise of several authors, Joan Costa, Cameron and Quinn, among others, who stat that when a company is geographically dispersed, the predominant culture tends to be devided into small subcultures. The case of the Go Galápagos company allows us to verify this theory, since being divided into Quito (administrative area) and Galápagos (its largest vessel), the central culture is fragmented and the appearance of sub cultures is evident. The application of this study revealed that the company maintains a hierarchical culture; however, in certain areas it presents the existence of strongly consolidated subcultures. In this article not only the results of this study are analyzed, but also the reasons why these subcultures emerge.