Changes in organizational culture represent a recurrent theme in OD interventions. Within the management and OD communities, the interest in organizational culture derives largely from its presumed impact on effectiveness (e.g., Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Ouchi, 1979; Ott, 1989; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Saffold, 1988; Uttal, 1983; Wiener, 1988; Wilkins and Dyer, 1988). Although reports linking culture to organizational success have received widespread attention (cf. Peters and Waterman, 1982), the underlying evidence is weak (Wilkins, 1983). Peters and Waterman (1982) examined cultural characteristics of successful companies but failed to ex-amine unsuccessful firms to determine if the cultural attributes were absent. It seems that the opposite and more desirable design of looking first at cultural characteristics and then at their success was not used.

In spite of the assertion by organizational culture perspective advocates of the unique suitability of their approach to organizational change, this literature remains ambivalent about its prospects for successful cultural change (Eubanks and Lloyd, 1992). Conflicting views range from whether a manager should even attempt to change organizational culture because of potential harmful effects (Schein, 1990), to arguments about which strategy to use. Some propose changing organizational culture by changing behavioral norms (Allen and Kraft, 1982), while others postulate that chief executive officers are the gatekeepers of organizational culture (Da-vis, 1984). Equivocation over the ethics of change and strategies for change are attributed to the relative infancy of the organizational culture perspective (Ott, 1989, p. 6) and the lack of grounding in systematic theory and research in the OD literature (Sathe, 1985, p. 1).