OCAI current and preferred culture change paper
Complete the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument, then write a two to three page paper on the quadrants with the greatest gap, the changes needed, where emphasis should rise or fall, what change in that quadrant means, what happens without it, the type of change, and two strategies with short and long-term goals.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 13, 2026
Read the gap, not the score
The instrument produces two profiles across four quadrants, and the analytic object is the distance between them rather than either profile on its own. A unit that scores high on hierarchy in both the current and preferred profile is not the finding; a unit that scores high on hierarchy now and wants markedly more clan is. So open the paper by naming the quadrant with the largest gap and the direction of that gap, and let the chart in the appendix carry the numbers rather than reciting them in the body. The prompt then asks both where emphasis should increase and where it should decrease, and the second half is the one students skip. Culture change is a reallocation rather than an addition, because the four quadrants compete for the same finite attention and budget, so an argument for more clan that never says what gets less has not made a choice at all.
The question about whether the change would be substantial, transformative, incremental or evolutionary is asking you to use a taxonomy rather than an adjective, so define the term you choose and justify it from the size of the gap and the time horizon. A one-point shift in a single quadrant is incremental; reversing the dominant quadrant is transformative and needs leadership commitment beyond a unit manager. The counterfactual question, what happens if change does not occur, deserves specifics rather than a warning about morale: name the retention, safety or patient experience measure that would move. Finally, the two strategies must each carry two short-term and two long-term goals with a stated measure of success, so build them as a small table and check that every goal has a metric attached. The reference rules are strict, requiring three sources dated within five years, one from course materials and two peer reviewed.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Interpret a competing values profile as a gap rather than as a score.
- 02Argue for decreased emphasis as well as increased emphasis.
- 03Classify a culture change using a defined taxonomy.
- 04State a counterfactual in terms of a measurable organisational outcome.
- 05Attach measures of success to short and long-term goals.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01The completed OCAI numerical and visual chart results, included as an appendix.
- 02Identification of the quadrants with the greatest gap between current and preferred culture.
- 03The organisational changes needed based on the scores.
- 04Quadrants needing increased and decreased emphasis.
- 05An explanation of what change in the identified quadrant means, and what happens without it.
- 06A classification of the change as substantial, transformative, incremental or evolutionary, with reasons.
- 07Two specific actionable strategies with two short-term and two long-term goals and success measures.
Eight questions in sequence
The gap
Which quadrants differ most between current and preferred, and by how much.
Changes indicated
What the gap implies about structure, leadership behaviour and reward.
More here, less there
Where emphasis should rise and, explicitly, where it should fall.
What change in this quadrant means
Concrete practice differences a staff member would notice.
If nothing changes
The measurable outcome that deteriorates, with evidence.
Type of change
Substantial, transformative, incremental or evolutionary, defined and justified.
Two strategies with goals
Actionable strategies, each with two short-term and two long-term measured goals.
Culture change evidence, dated within five years
Recommended databases
- CINAHL
- PubMed
- Assigned course text chapters
- AHRQ
- Business source databases
Search sequence
- 1.Complete the instrument honestly before reading anything, so the profile is not primed.
- 2.Read the assigned leadership chapters for the vocabulary the marker expects.
- 3.Search for peer-reviewed studies of culture change in health care within the last five years.
- 4.Find evidence linking your chosen quadrant to a measurable outcome for the counterfactual.
- 5.Check a change taxonomy source so the classification question can be answered with a definition.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Change Management In Health Care
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Change models and resistance, for classifying the change and building the strategies.
- 02
Continuous Quality Improvement
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Measurement discipline for attaching success measures to each goal.
- 03
Section 4: Ways To Approach the Quality Improvement Process
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality · 2024
Turning an intended change into short and long-term goals that can be tracked.
- 04
TeamSTEPPS 3.0
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality · 2024
A worked intervention for shifting collaboration and communication norms on a unit.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Reciting the four quadrant scores instead of interpreting the gap.
- Naming quadrants to increase without naming any to decrease.
- Choosing a change type without defining it or justifying the choice.
- Answering the counterfactual with a general warning about morale.
- Writing goals with no measure of success attached.
- Citing references older than five years when the prompt sets that boundary.
Submission checklist
- The OCAI chart appears as an appendix and is excluded from the page count.
- The largest gap is named with its direction.
- Both increased and decreased emphasis are addressed.
- The change type is defined and justified.
- The counterfactual names a measurable outcome.
- Two strategies each carry two short-term and two long-term goals.
- Every goal has a stated measure of success.
- Three references appear, one from course materials and two peer reviewed, all within five years.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.