Denison’s Culture Model in the Context of Romanian Prefectures. Is There Room for Improvement?

Abstract

Organizational culture and its importance have become common knowledge over the years, but do we really understand its influence, especially on the effectiveness of public institutions? We often talk about increasing performance, transparency and involvement in the lives of citizens to improve their quality of life, sometimes without looking at how public entities function. Therefore, this study wants to understand how exactly the organizational culture affects the Romanian Prefectures and what is the perception of their employees regarding their mission, adaptability, involvement and consistency. Since it is the responsibility of the prefectures to en­sure the implementation of government policies at the local level, besides their important role in verify­ing the legitimacy of the administrative acts issued by the local public administration, it is imperative to see what role organizational culture plays and how it influences the group dynamics, their adaptability to change and their responsiveness.

Using Denison’s model, we can analyze the per­ceived level of performance, effectiveness and what types of synergies are formed at the group level. Un­derstanding the main patterns in the prefectures can support our efforts to build more resilient, flexible and adaptable structures, much needed characteris­tics in essential structures such as these.