Competing Values Framework

Description

"The Competing Values Framework of Quinn, Rohrbaugh is a theory that was developed initially from research conducted on the major indicators of effective organizations. Based on statistical analyses of a comprehensive list of effectiveness indicators, Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) discovered two major dimensions underlying conceptions of effectiveness.

The first dimension is related to organizational focus, from an internal emphasis on the well-being and development of people in the organization to an external focus on the well-being and development of the organization itself.

The second dimension differentiates organizational preference for structure and represents the contrast between stability and control and flexibility and change. Together the two dimensions form four quadrants.

The Competing Values Framework got its name because the criteria within the four models at first seem to carry conflicting messages. Organizations must be adaptable and flexible, but we also want them to be stable and controlled at the same time. A paradox.

Each quadrant of the framework represents one of four major models of organization and management theory (Quinn 1988):

1. Human Relations Model: places a great deal on emphasis on flexibility and internal focus, and stresses cohesion, morale, and human resources development as criteria for effectiveness.

2. Open Systems Model emphasizes flexibility and external focus, and stresses readiness, growth, resource acquisition and external support.

3. Rational Goal Model: emphasizes control and an external focus, and views planning, goal setting, productivity and efficiency as effective.

4. Internal Process Model: emphasizes control and an internal focus, and stresses the role of information management, communication, stability and control." (http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_quinn_competing_values_framework.html)

Discussion

CVF and the TIMN framework by David Ronfeldt

David Ronfeldt:

"it’s relevant to my TIMN effort. To sketch quickly, their effort results in four quadrants about what a company requires: an internal process model (for keeping order); an open system model (for adaptability); a rational goal model (for assuring productivity); and a human relations model (for morale).

Soon as I read this, I thought about bygone sociologist Talcott Parsons. And in fact Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) remark at length on the overlap of their model with his (which fell into disrepute, much attacked from the Left, for being too stability-oriented in the 1960s).

Parsons’ “general theory of action” identifies four “functional imperatives” that every social system and its sub-systems must perform: “pattern-maintenance (including tension-management), goal-attainment, adaptation, and integration” (Parsons, 1958, p. 294). In my view, these imperatives correspond roughly to the TIMN forms: pattern-maintenance to the tribal form, goal-attainment to the institutional hierarchy form, adaptation to the market form, and system-integration to the network form. But the way that Quinn and Rohrbaugh depict their own model and then relate it to Parsons’ four imperatives doesn’t quite match up with my view of TIMN. The clearest match is of their human relations model, with Parsons’ pattern maintenance, with my T form. The disparities have something to do with the two axes they use to define their quadrants." (via email, March 2009)