Introduction

The concept of organizational culture has become a primary focus of leaders in both the private and public sectors and has been vigorously championed by leading management consultancies including McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, Accenture, and others. The reason for this surge of interest can be traced to the convergence over the past 5 years of multiple societal issues, each of which has pointed a finger of blame at organizational culturesFootnote 1. In the aftermath of the beating death of Tyre Nichols by the Memphis Police, a chorus of elected officials and commentators has again called for a fundamental change to the organizational cultures of local police departments. The question of organizational culture has also become prominent in healthcare, focusing on the ways that culture affects the safety of vulnerable populations such as hospitalized patients. What began as distinct lines of research in anthropology, sociology, psychology, management studies, and health care has coalesced into an area of intense general interest. Strong and growing recent interest in this concept is confirmed by Google Trends, which shows a steady upward trend in Google searches involving the phrase “organizational culture” from a low index of 23 in December 2018, increasing to an index of 100 by April 2022, indicating the strongest search volume to date. Perhaps, because of the surge in interest, a torrent of theoretical concepts and measures has flooded the scene, conceptualizing organizational cultures using dimensions or typologies, with little attention paid to differentiating psychological variables from environmental variables, or causes from effects. This paper argues for a more grounded approach to the concept of organizational culture, setting it in the broad psychological literature on human motivation.

The Current State of Theory

The term organizational culture was coined in 1951 by the Canadian psychologist and management consultant Elliot Jaques who served in the military during the Second World War alongside Harvard’s Henry Murray, eventually conducting research for the US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Jaques defined organizational culture as the “customary and traditional way of thinking and doing of things, which is shared to a greater or lesser degree by all its members, and which new members must learn, and at least partially accept, in order to be accepted into service in the firm….” (Jaques, 1951, p. 251). Jaques’ definition points to a key characteristic of culture as a fundamental set of assumptions that underlie the very fabric of thinking and doing; as such, organizational culture operates in a manner that is automatic, habitual, and subconscious.

The list of seminal papers in the field of organizational culture invariably includes the cultural frameworks of Hofstede (1984), Cooke and Rousseau (1988), Schein (1990), Denison (1990), Denison and Spreitzer (1991), Cameron and Quinn (1999), Sackmann (2011), and Schneider et al. (2013), all of whom hail from organizational psychology or management programs in business schools and their consulting arms. Unsurprisingly, the culture frameworks coming out of business schools have a notable tendency to be expressed as two-by-two matrices, resulting in sets of (usually four) “types” of cultures derived from the pairs of axes, which have included Jungian archetypes, rigidity vs. flexibility, internal vs. external focus, task vs. process focus, collaboration vs. individualism, and hierarchy vs. communalism (Jung et al., 2009).

A separate theoretical stream has emerged within healthcare programs such as public health, nursing, and medicine; these frameworks have tended to be more focused on a single purpose, namely, to instill cultures supportive of patient safety. In this camp, the seminal articles include the work of Glisson and colleagues focused on Organizational Social Context (Glisson, 2007; Glisson et al., 2006, 2008) as well as the research tradition focused on trauma-informed culture (Baker et al., 2021; Hales, Green et al., 2019; Hales, Kusmaul et al., 2019). A closely related workstream focuses on supporting safety cultures in occupations subject to substantial risks like transportation, mining, and nuclear energy (Zohar & Hofmann, 2012; Zohar & Luria, 2005).

Culture vs. Climate

The major distinction made in this field differentiates between culture and climate. Culture refers to implicit beliefs and assumptions held about organizational values, whereas climate refers to emblematic organizational experiences such as policies, practices, and procedures (Schneider et al., 2013). A close, recursive relationship must exist between the meanings attached to specific practices and broader assumptions and beliefs that provide the context for those meanings. As suggested by Schneider et al. (2013), the popularity of these two concepts has seesawed back and forth across the decades with the climate being favored in the 1970s, overtaken by culture in the 1980s, then tilting back to the climate in the 1990s through the 2000s and early 2010s.

The lack of clear distinctions between climate and culture has been a continuing source of confusion:

When culture and climate were first discussed together in the 1990s, a great deal of confusion was generated about their differences and similarities. Some organizational experts still see the two constructs as similar and use the terms interchangeably. Some argue that one construct encompasses the other. Others argue they are distinct and separate. A literature review in the late 1990s found more than 50 definitions of culture and more than 30 definitions of climate. (Glisson, 2007, p. 739)

Thanks to a framework provided by Edgar Schein (2010), there may be a general agreement about the distinction between culture and climate, which boils down to the difference between things that are implicit and general on the one hand or explicit and specific on the other. Schein’s framework is simple: culture manifests itself at three levels of abstraction, artifacts, values, and implicit assumptions:

  • Artifacts, the most observable and least abstract, show up in behaviors and environmental factors that shape and guide behavior. These include office design, quality, and style; manner of dress; how clean the bathrooms are kept; stories, legends, and sayings; and socialization processes. Policies, practices, and procedures, the stuff of climate, are all artifacts of culture to the extent that manifestations imply something about the values of the organization. This is the evidence that bespeaks a value. For example, an organization that gives their employees every Friday off in the summer is tacitly communicating that they value work/life harmony. An organization that terminates people who have taken time off for mental health is communicating a different value.

  • At the next step toward greater abstraction comes espoused values, the organization’s core values and norms. You cannot see values, but you can detect their presence based on a group’s behavior: things that are rewarded, celebrated, and promoted are valued; the things that are shunned, demoted, or terminated are not. The key point is that the actual values governing behavior in an organization may or may not be consistent with officially espoused values.

  • At the most abstract level are the core implicit assumptions held by individuals in the organization about its reason for existence and purpose. As Schneider et al. (2013) point out, these assumptions “are frequently so ingrained that they cannot necessarily be easily articulated, requiring in-depth interviewing to illuminate them.”

A breakthrough in climate research came when it was realized that most early climate research had implicitly assumed that achieving a climate of employee well-being was the presumed goal of organizations. A variety of other organizational goalsFootnote 2 have since been articulated including achieving climates of safety, fairness/justice, attachment/affiliation/cooperation, diversity/inclusivity, benevolence/support/trust, empowerment/initiative/self-direction, growth, respect/recognition, stimulation/variety, authenticity/voice/conformity, innovation/creativity, and ethics/service. By first articulating the overarching organizational goal, researchers, and consultants have found it much easier to identify key processes, policies, and practices that support or detract from this goal, as well as the most relevant outcomes to measure over time (Schneider et al., 2013). For example, an organization primarily focused on employee well-being might choose to monitor emotional well-being as a key metric; one focused on social relations might monitor leader–member exchange; one focused on inclusivity might choose to monitor the demographic characteristics associated with hiring, advancement, and retention; one focused on service might monitor customer satisfaction and loyalty scores; and one focused on achievement might monitor financial performance most closely. This new emphasis on goals is central to the thesis of this paper, to which we will return shortly.

Level of Analysis

There has been an ongoing debate in the literature about whether organizational culture exists as an individual-level, psychological phenomenon or as a group-level, and sociological phenomenon. The insistence on maintaining the group level as the appropriate unit of analysis, at least in climate research, has necessitated unusual measurement approaches such as referent-shift consensus ratings (i.e., one’s notion about group-level characteristics), which are analyzed using interrater reliabilities as a prerequisite to aggregation to form group level scores. The focus on characterizing groups has introduced complications related to the level of analysis, which in large organizations can get extraordinarily complex as employees may work in any of multiple potential groupings simultaneously such as project teams, functional units, or divisions. We will argue that there are significant advantages to returning concepts of culture to the individual level.

The field seems to have unwittingly reentered the classic debate between early social psychologists and sociologists, exemplified by the arguments of Floyd and Gordon Allport against the immaterial “group mind” proposed by Gustave Le Bon, Emile Durkheim, and William McDougall. The scientific resolution to that debate involved the recognition that although culture is a real phenomenon, one that can even shape gene expression epigenetically, its effects must be observable at the individual level if they are to have any real impact on behavior. As vivid examples, cultural effects, brought about through socialization processes, are readily evident in individual-level biases revealed by the implicit association test and in priming studies. This is a key point for determining the measurement approach, both in terms of the level of data collection and the level of analysis. In the interests of clarity and parsimony, we argue that group-level effects of organizational culture are simply aggregations of individual results.

States vs. Traits

Considering the strong emphasis in the field on organizational culture change, it is surprising that theorists have tended to describe organizational culture as a trait of the organization rather than a state. Traits are unchangeable whereas states must change. We suspect that this ambiguity is a byproduct of the level of analysis issue; if we think of culture as a characteristic of groups rather than people, we are more likely to think of culture as enduring and stable over time. Instead, we have argued that the appropriate level of analysis is the individual, and as a “borrowed” characteristic that is temporarily “lent” by the organization to the individual, cultural effects should be viewed as highly malleable states.

Dimensions vs. Types

As noted above, a primary debate in the field of organizational culture relates to whether cultures should be described in terms of their position on a variety of continuous dimensions, considered as types, or some combination of both approaches. For our purposes, we point to the unfortunate tendency of some theoretical systems to adopt zero-sum assumptions about dimensions and typologies, that is, if a given organization is high on X attribute, it must be low on Y attribute. A particularly popular system is the Competing Values Framework, the name of which strongly implies that culture is a zero-sum game. If we assume that values necessarily compete, leaning more on one means leaning less on another, usually the one at the opposite pole of the same dimension. When studied empirically, however, Hartnell et al. (2011) found that performance on the dimension is not zero-sum; in fact, it is possible for organizations to perform well (or poorly) on the four endpoints proposed in this model, and that performance on all four simultaneously was significantly linked with a variety of business outcomes.

Culture types in opposite quadrants are not competing or paradoxical. Instead, they coexist and work together. . . [leading to the conclusion that] competing values may be more complementary than contradictory… In short, organizations that do many things well are more generally more effective… (Hartnell et al., 2011, p. 687)

We argue that these “things organizations do well” are not arbitrary but instead represent the fulfillment of a core set of human needs, and as a series of discrete needs, it makes more sense to conceptualize needs as additive rather than zero-sum.

A Clarion Call for Clarity

Helpfully, comprehensive reviews of the organizational culture literature have appeared every few years providing overviews of commonly used definitions, dimensions, and subcomponents (Ilies & Metz, 2017; Kalaiarasi & Sethuram, 2017; Nanayakkara & Wilkinson, 2021; Pathiranage et al., 2020; Schneider et al., 2013).

These literature reviews testify to a bewildering muddle of concepts, dimensions, and elements:

Early research on organizational climate was characterized by little agreement on the definition of it (and) almost no conceptual orientation to the early measures designed to assess it... There was confusion between the level of the theory and the level of data and analysis. (Schneider et al., 2013, p. 363–364)

(The) complexity (of culture) scared neither culture scholars nor practitioners, the former group feeling liberated by the ambiguity the definition(s) presented, permitting them to explore culture as they saw fit. (Schneider et al., 2013, p. 370)

Despite the importance to researchers, managers, and policy makers of how organization culture contributes to organization variables, there is uncertainty and debate about what we know and don’t know. A review of the literature reveals that studies examining the association between organization culture and organization variables are divergent in how they conceptualize key constructs and their interrelationships. (Kalaiarasi & Sethuram, 2017, p. 9)

It is important to note that these reviews have focused on peer-reviewed theoretical and empirical academic publications. As might be expected with popular emerging topics, practitioners have introduced a slew of models and concepts compounding the conceptual confusion.

Analysis of the Jung et al. (2009) and van der Post et al. (1997) Literature Reviews

Fortunately, the literature on organizational culture theory, dimensions, and assessment items has been extensively reviewed. The two most comprehensive reviews are those of Jung et al. (2009) and Van Der Post et al. (1997). Jung et al. (2009) covered 70 models representing 186 distinct components of organizational culture. Van Der Post et al. (1997) covered 31 models representing 114 distinct cultural components. These authors have aptly summarized the state of theory in this domain as riddled with category errors:

There is no shortage of definitions of organizational culture… It is evident that various researchers have applied a large number of dimensions of organization culture that cannot be neatly categorized in terms of an overall organizational culture theory. (Van der Post et al., 1997, p. 147)

The multi-layered nature of the dimensions put forward further complicates the issue… Dimensions span abstract ideas, such as ‘warmth,’ ‘satisfaction,’ or ‘esprit de corps’ on the one hand and observable phenomena like ‘rituals’ and ‘structures’ on the other. (Jung et al., 2009, p. 42)

These authors’ work provides a starting point for researchers interested in describing the structure and taxonomy of the many concepts of organizational culture. Our analysis of their work lends additional support to the conclusion that organizational culture theory is thoroughly muddledFootnote 3:

  • Of the components identified, 95% were associated with only a single theory.

  • The most cited component, teamwork, appeared in only 7% of theoretical frameworks (5).

These results suggest a severe problem of definitional consistency. As expected, the resulting elements range widely across multiple conceptual categories from holistic cultural outcomes (e.g., strength of culture) to the higher-order processes that deliver these outcomes (e.g., system focus) and to the lower-order structures and artifacts that underlie these processes (e.g., symbols).

At the most abstract level, we encounter what we will call general descriptions of cultural outcomes. These include:

  • Strength of culture (overall).

  • Constructive culture.

  • Job-oriented culture.

  • Employee-oriented culture.

  • Resident-centered culture.

At the next level of abstraction down, a split occurs between individual-level psychological concepts and external environmental concepts. Interestingly, the psychological constructs identified tend to be highly rational and cognitive as opposed to emotional or affective:

  • Beliefs.

  • Philosophies (e.g., medication philosophy and nursing foundations for quality of care).

  • Psychological characteristics related to work.

We will argue that behind these vague psychological constructs lie the operations of a set of fundamental human needs as described by a recent unified model of human motivation (Pincus, 2022a, b). Supporting this contention, we find that fully 93% of the concepts identified by Jung et al. (2009) and Van Der Post et al. (1997) can be seen as reflecting discrete human needs, from feeling secure in the organization to having a long-term mission and vision. These concepts address the domain of the self (e.g., safety, authenticity, and potential), the material domain (e.g., autonomy, immersion, and success), the social domain (e.g., inclusion, caring, and recognition), and the spiritual domain (e.g., justice, ethics, transcendent purpose). Applying a structured model of human motivation to these needs is the primary focus of this paper.

On the other side of this divide, we encounter what we will call general environmental conditions, which exist at two broad levels as follows: higher-order organizational consequences (e.g., cost-effectiveness and quality) and lower-order structural characteristics of organizations (e.g., organizational structure and organization of work). Some of the higher-order organizational outcomes or consequences have an implicit evaluative component, e.g., the desirability of quality and cost-effectiveness vs. the undesirability of conflicts and burdens.

  • Higher-order process states: integration, system focus, organizational focus, organizational support, organizational commitment, organizational reach, organizational clarity, and organizational vitality.

  • Positive higher-order process states: cost-effectiveness, quality at the same cost, and professionalism.

  • Negative higher-order process states: conflict, confrontation, opposition, and perceived burdens.

A great deal of concept proliferation within organizational culture theory has occurred at the next lower level of abstraction, the level of specific environmental processes, structures, and artifacts, which have the potential to fulfill fundamental human needs. These environmental resources interact with need states in a one-to-many relationship; that is, a single resource (e.g., management style) can help someone meet a variety of needs; similarly, we should expect multiple recursive interactions between environmental resources and any given need. These are the systems that produce higher-order outcomes for the organization.

Accordingly, there are lower-order environmental concepts that range from the general to the specific:

  • Lower-order processes: control process, information flow, communication (process, patterns), leadership process, management style, supervision, teacher involvement, program development, and human resource development.

  • Lower-order structures: environment (physical, work), work environment, organization of work, organizational structure, temporal boundaries and polychronicity, and people integrated with technology.

  • Lower-order artifacts: symbols, policies, and procedures.

Calls have been made for theorists to identify a larger framework for organizational culture that can integrate the disparate and growing collection of constructs. In service of this goal, we argue that certain characteristics of culture must be clarified. To this end, we propose a theoretical hierarchy for conceptualizing the dimensions of organizational culture (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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A hierarchy of organizational culture concepts

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Integrating Concepts of Culture, Values, Well-being, and Engagement

As we have argued, the most fundamental distinction concerns the difference between endogenous psychological variables and exogenous environmental variables. This distinction concerns what we want versus what we have available to us. What we have variables are environmental and exogenous, occurring outside the organism, whereas what we want variables are psychological and endogenous, occurring within the organism. The S–O-R assumption used throughout the history of contemporary psychology is that exogenous factors (what we are offered by the organization) behave as stimuli, which influence the organism’s psychological state (through a process of comparison against what we want or need), creating drives that motivate behavior. We will argue that most organizational culture constructs should be thought of as points of juxtaposition (or comparison) between the psychological needs of individuals and the resources provided by the organization resulting in variable levels of need fulfillment. The core concept at play here is motivation. Motivations represent pent-up energies caused by unmet needs (Pincus, 2004), which direct organisms to seek fulfilled, balanced states.

The application of the motivation construct provides an opportunity for further theory integration for a series of related concepts: values (Pincus, 2024), subjective well-being (Pincus, 2023c), and employee engagement (Pincus, 2022b). An individual’s subjective well-being is primarily the product of the comparison of environmental affordances against psychological goals. To the extent that goals are met, a healthy culture will be inferred; to the extent that needs go unmet, the culture will be considered toxic. Those employees who experience healthy cultures marked by the fulfillment of their psychological needs (states of well-being) can be described as highly engaged; those laboring in toxic cultures defined by a lack of need fulfillment (states of ill-being) can be described as actively disengaged. In this model, organizational culture provides environmental conditions that bespeak its values; an organization’s values are the relative level of priority it places on satisfying discrete needs, producing relative states of well-being, which translates to various levels of employee engagement.

Organizational culture theorists are fond of using the metaphor of DNA in describing the transmission of culture (Boncheck, 2016; Culture Amp, 2023; Accenture Strategy, 2023). Staying with this metaphor, the building blocks of DNA are adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine (AGCT), which encode specific proteins. If culture is the DNA strand, then actuated values are analogous to the RNA strand, which transcribes the instructions for building culture-inspired conditions. But there are deeper points of correspondence to this metaphor (Fig. 2).

  • We would argue that the essential building blocks of culture are the twelve emotional needs of our matrix, with any culture defined by the relative weight assigned to each emotional need; these relative weights represent the organization’s values.

  • There are predetermined complementarities in base pairs: adenine always pairs with thymine (A-T), and guanine always pairs with cytosine (G-C). This is exactly equivalent to our model wherein the domain of the self is polar with the social domain, and the material domain is polar with the spiritual domain.

  • When DNA is transcribed into RNA, guanine continues to pair with cytosine, but now, adenine pairs with uracil (A–U), representing a slight change in chemical composition. This is analogous to the continuous adaptation required as old cultural templates are applied to ever-changing conditions.

Fig. 2
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Culture provides environmental affordances that fulfill psychological needs resulting in relative states of well-being and engagement

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Emergent Points of Consensus

A set of commonalities in conceptualizations of organizational culture have emerged from literature reviews. We will use these points of consensus as a starting point for our main contention, that is, organizational culture and values are best conceived as a product of the relative fulfillment of human needs, and that the wide variety of constructs proposed in this literature fit neatly into a structured taxonomy of human motivations.

Across the papers reviewed, several points of consensus emerge (Table 1; Schein, 2010; Jung et al., 2009; Van Der Post et al., 1997; Nanayakkara & Wilkinson, 2021; Cooke & Szumal, 1993, 2000; Hales, Kusmaul et al., 2019; Teehankee, 1994; Hofstede & Hofstede, 2001):

  1. 1.

    Organizational culture is a multi-dimensional construct (Nanayakkara & Wilkinson, 2021; Jung et al., 2009; Van Der Post et al., 1997).

  2. 2.

    Organizational culture constructs represent invisible latent variables and therefore can be estimated but never directly observed (Cooke & Szumal, 1993; Hales, Kusmaul et al., 2019; Teehankee, 1994).

  3. 3.

    Organizational culture is a holistic quality that is socially constructed and historically determined (Jung et al., 2009)Footnote 4.

  4. 4.

    Organizational culture is deeply ingrained and operates implicitly and subconsciously (Schneider et al., 2013; Cooke & Szumal, 2000; Jung et al., 2009; Hofstede & Hofstede, 2001).

  5. 5.

    Organizational culture is inherently evaluative in defining what has value and what does not (Schneider et al., 2013; Hemmelgarn, et al., 2006).

  6. 6.

    Organizational culture is rooted in fundamental human motivations (Jung et al., 2009; Pearson & Hammer, 2004; Hawkins, 1997; Cooke & Lafferty, 1994).

Table 1 Definitional characteristics of organizational culture and motivation
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Why Motivation?

The essential characteristics of organizational culture are well-aligned with the concept of motivation, defined by Pincus (2004) as an unobservable state of emotion or desire operating on the will, causing it to act. Both tend to operate implicitly and subconsciously, latently, holistically, and evaluatively. We believe that this alignment is rooted in the culture’s need-fulfillment function, which interacts with endogenous motivational states. The goal of this paper is to suggest that a meta-theory of human motivation can accommodate all the varied dimensions of organizational culture.

The leading theory of motivation is Ross Buck’s (1985) PRIME Theory, an acronym for Primary Motivational and Emotional Systems. Buck’s notion is that motivation is a condition of pent-up energy potential that, when released, becomes actualized through three brain–body channels: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. The three readouts serve different purposes: syncretic cognition supports the ability to self-regulate; emotional expression assists with social coordination; and physiological responses prepare the body for corresponding adaptive behavior. The effects of culture involve the same pattern of cognition (e.g., identification with the organization), emotion (e.g., positive feelings about the organization), and behavior (e.g., organizational citizenship behaviors).

In the views of both Buck (1985) and Damasio (2012), human motivational processes are rooted in homeostatic processes that regulate bodily conditions like temperature, levels of acidity vs. alkalinity, calcium, potassium, and blood sugar to maintain a stable and healthy internal milieu. These processes operate automatically and unconsciously, and, evolutionarily, long pre-date the advent of consciousness. Damasio has speculated that the very existence of consciousness is the result of the need to respond flexibly to imbalanced conditions. In this view, higher-order psychological needs like the need to be one’s true self, to live up to one’s full potential, or to behave ethically are all adaptations and extensions of biological systems regulating homeostasis. It is important to note that, although grounded in evolutionary biology, the more abstract the psychological needs become, the further they venture from their biological bases, and the more they are determined by cultureFootnote 5.

Applying a Taxonomy of Human Motivation to Organizational Culture Constructs

The idea that cultures are systems of need fulfillment begs the question, which needs? The purpose of this paper is to apply a taxonomy of human motivation based on first principles with the goal of defining a complete set of higher-order human needs, goals, and values (Pincus, 2022a). Accordingly, our analysis is focused on endogenous psychological needs, goals, and values, which can be fulfilled to different extents by environmental and cultural affordances.

A comprehensive taxonomy of human motivations was recently introduced by Pincus (2022a). Despite an abundance of mini theories of motivation proposed within the psychological literature, no comprehensive taxonomy based on first principles yet existed to categorize motivations like the needs for achievement, competence, relatedness, immersion, justice, ethics, purpose, or autonomy. Maslow’s (1970) need hierarchy, which is often referenced in the organizational culture literature (Teehankee, 1994; Cooke & Szumal, 1993; Cooke & Rousseau, 1988) provides some guidance, yet, Maslow’s concern with atypical self-actualized subjects had the unfortunate consequence of ignoring a wide spectrum of now-recognized basic motives including the need for caring identified by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, the needs for material power and achievement proposed by David McClelland and David Winter, the need for experiential immersion (flow) proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the need to form and express one’s unique identity proposed by Erik Erikson, the need for justice described by Paul Bloom and Michael Lerner, and the need for a moral code described by Lawrence Kohlberg, Jonathan Haidt, and Joshua Greene.

Our taxonomy is designed based on first principles. Because motivation always involves a change of state, the taxonomy asks the following two questions:

  1. 1.

    First, in what part of your life do you seek change? The answer to this question is found in one of four life domains: the domain of the self, the material domain, the social domain, and the spiritual domain. Note that these represent pairs of opposites—self vs. social, and material vs. spiritual. These four domains of human life have been previously proposed in a variety of fields, including philosophy, psychology, and each of the five major world religions (Pincus, 2022a).

  2. 2.

    The second question is what level of change do you seek? To answer this question, we employ Aristotle’s (1933) three states of existence, the foundational level of potential (being), an intermediate level of potentiality-as-such (doing), and a higher level of actuality (having)Footnote 6.

When the three modes of existence are crossed by the four life domains, the result is a comprehensive matrix of twelve cells since there are no other domains of life or modes of existence. In our earlier review of the motivation literature (Pincus, 2022a), we identified more than 100 distinct motivational constructs; all found homes within one of the twelve matrix categories of motivation, supporting the assertion that it is comprehensive. The matrix of human motivations appears in Table 2. As noted, the matrix columns represent the four domains of human activity (i.e., self, material, social, and spiritual), and the rows represent the level of change desired (i.e., being, doing, and having).

Table 2 A unified pyramid of human motivation (Pincus, 2022a)
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The matrix appears as a two-dimensional table in Table 2 for publication purposes, but can be more accurately represented as a three-dimensional, four-sided pyramid (Fig. 3). The four faces of the pyramid represent the life domains. The narrowing from the base to the peak of each side is intended to reinforce the idea that we begin the climb at the foundational level of each domain before we can progress toward higher needs. As Maslow suggested, progressively fewer individuals can reach the higher levels, reducing their relative size toward the apex. The choice of a four-sided pyramid is also intended to reinforce the point that the domains represent pairs of opposites, with the self-domain antipodal to the social domain, and the material domain antipodal to the spiritual domain; this proposition has implications for hypothesis generation, to which we will return at the end of this paper.

Fig. 3
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A three-dimensional representation of the unified pyramid of human motivations. https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/743462206

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There are two additional features of the matrix with implications for organizational culture. These relate to need hierarchies within each life domain and the “pull” and “push” of motivational energy:

  • Applying the principles of both Aristotle and Maslow, our model posits a hierarchical, temporal sequence. Progressing “upward” from foundational to experiential needs, or from experiential to aspirational needs, requires at least partial satisfaction of more basic needs. The satisfaction of lower needs allows higher needs to become salient.

  • Each of the 12 needs can operate as either a promotional need (the desire for more of the good) and/or a prevention need (the desire for less of the bad). This polarity is reflected in common language descriptions of people being motivated either by a “pull” or a “push”Footnote 7.

Categorization of Dimensions

In all, 223 of the 238 concepts (93.7%) identified by Jung et al. (2009) and Van Der Post et al. (1997) correspond to motivations in our matrix.

  • Seven of the remaining 15 concepts consist of generic descriptors of process states, e.g., leadership process, and communication flow. These were excluded on the basis that they represent generic process states with no evaluative component.

  • The remaining eight concepts were excluded because they specifically address outcomes of a different construct, employee engagement. Examples include job satisfaction, loyalty, commitment, and intention to stay or leave employment.

Table 3 displays the matrix again with the distribution of dimensions taken from the census of culture dimensions assembled by Jung et al. (2009) and Van Der Post et al. (1997), along with a review of six commonly used, publicly available organizational culture assessments, those of Limeade (2021), Hales, Kusmaul et al. (2019), Denison Consulting (2023), Sashkin and Rosenbach (2013), Cameron and Quinn (1999), and O’Reilly et al. (1991); additionally, we categorized the content associated with Glisson et al. (2008), displayed in Table 4Footnote 8. The dimensions and items are categorized into the twelve emotional needs in Table 5 and 6, respectively (see “Appendix”).

  • In terms of organizational culture dimensions, there is even distribution across 10 of the 12 cells; two core human needs, however, receive scant mentions, underscoring the value of a comprehensive theoretical framework. The relative absence of the need for Justice and Recognition and the heavy emphasis on self-domain motives (Authenticity, Potential) and material-domain motives (autonomy and success) suggest that organizational culture theorists have tended to focus on issues of the self and the material.

  • In terms of assessment items, again, we see concentrations in some of the same areas as authenticity, autonomy, and success; however, we also see a heavy emphasis on inclusion and an even heavier weight on ethics, which alone accounts for 18% of items.

Table 3 Distributions of organizational culture dimensions identified by Jung et al. (2009), van der Post et al. (1997), and several commonly used organizational culture assessment instruments by the twelve cells of the unified pyramid of human motivation
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Table 4 Distributions of organizational culture dimensions from The University of Tennessee’s Organizational Social Context culture assessment instrument by the twelve cells of the unified pyramid of human motivation
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In the following section, we provide a brief introduction to the twelve emotional needs and the corresponding dimensions of organizational culture.

Motives of the Self

Safety and Insecurity

The need for safety is the most fundamental need in most models of motivation. When safety needs are salient, there are strivings for security, reassurance, and inner harmony. Twelve major motivational systems list the need for safety as a fundamental need (Pincus, 2022a). Reflecting the essential role of safety needs in Glisson’s Organizational Social Context Model, which is primarily applied to health care settings focused on promoting a culture of safety; safety-related items represent 18.6% of total items, the largest share of any motive. Outside the healthcare context, safety needs are still well-represented but at a much lower level of 6 to 7% of items and dimensions. These include the concepts of psychological safety, security, job security, and stability.

Authenticity and Conformity

At the next, experiential level of the self-domain is the need to be one’s authentic self despite conformity pressures; this is the desire to view oneself as being different from others in a good way. Nine major motivational systems include the need for a unique identity as a fundamental need (Pincus, 2022a). This need is reflected in 6 to 13% of dimensions and 9 to 10% of items. Among the dimensions reviewed by Van Der Post et al. (1997) and Jung et al. (2009), mentions of the need for authenticity appear as individualism, identity, adaptability, innovation, absence of bureaucracy, personality, and personal life. Items that speak to this need refer to adaptability, distinctiveness, curiosity, flexibility, and willingness to experiment.

Fulfilling Potential and Limitation

The culminating level of self-domain strivings is represented by the need for personal growth and development, to actualize oneself to fulfill one’s potential. Eleven major motivational systems include personal growth or actualization as a fundamental need (Pincus, 2022a). Margulies (1969) has argued that organizational culture creates conditions and incentives that support self-actualization. This need appears in 5 to 13% of dimensions reviewed and in 8 to 9% of items. Among the corresponding dimensions reviewed are emphasis on growth, development, capacity development, educational opportunities, continuous personal improvement, training, staff development, learning culture, and manager knowledge. Among the items reflecting this need are notions of opportunities for personal and professional growth, learning orientation, capabilities of people, and investing in people.

Motives of the Material Domain

Autonomy and Disempowerment

The foundational need within the material domain is the striving for autonomy, to feel able and authorized to take positive action. Seven major motivational systems feature the need for autonomy, whether labeled empowerment, self-efficacy, or self-determination (Pincus, 2022a). Because the material domain is typically associated with the world of work and play, it is not surprising to see a strong representation of these concepts. Among the reviewed dimensions, we see 14 to 19% of total concepts and 10 to 16% of items. The related concepts include action orientation, assertiveness, autonomy, decision-making, control, delegation, empowerment, influence, authority, freedom, power distance, self-governance, and use of resources.

Immersion and Stagnation

At the next level of the material domain is the need for immersion, the striving to feel totally absorbed in the moment, often described as a state of flow. Thirteen major motivational systems include this motive (Pincus, 2022a). Among the dimensions reviewed fall 8 to 16% of total concepts, and 6 to 9% of items. Among the immersion-related concepts are attention, commitment, participation, involvement, challenge, facilitation, performance, and productivity. Among immersion-related items are terms like energy, enthusiasm, and intensity.

Success and Failure

The material domain’s highest level of aspiration is the need for material success as the fruit of one’s labor. Seven major motivational systems include this motive (Pincus, 2022a). The need for achievement is represented by 8 to 9% of organizational culture dimensions and by 8 to 11% of items. These dimensions include accomplishment, achievement, rewards emphasis, goals, outcomes, and results orientation. These items include notions of ambition, competitiveness, exceeding expectations, and performing higher than standards.

Motives of the Social Domain

Inclusion and Exclusion

The most basic, foundational level of the social domain is the need for social connection which is the gateway to close relationships and social admiration. Nine major motivational systems include the need for affiliation, connection, or belonging (Pincus, 2022a). Among dimensions of organizational culture, affiliation-related concepts range from 9 to 11% of constructs and 4 to 11% of items. Dimensions include affiliation, cohesiveness, collaborative culture, collegiality, coordination, group functioning, interpersonal relationships, peer support, peer team building, social relationships, team culture, and teamwork. Items include terms like inclusion, fitting in, developing friendships, and cooperation.

Caring and Uncaring

The next level of the social domain is the need for mutually caring, intimate relationships. Eight major theories of motivation include the need for attachment, intimacy, or nurturance (Pincus, 2022a). Among dimensions of organizational culture, caring-related concepts account for 8% of total dimensions in both the Van Der Post and Jung reviews, as well as the OSC assessment; among other assessments, this theme accounts for 5% of items. Dimensions include concern for people, empathy, humane, supportive climate, warmth, and a humanistic workplace. Items include terms like being supportive, caring, aggressiveness (reverse), understanding, and listening openly and attentively.

Recognition and Scorn

The highest level of the social domain is the striving for social esteem and admiration. Eight major motivational systems include the need for admiration, honor, or esteem (Pincus, 2022a). The organizational culture literature is surprisingly light in its coverage of this fundamental need, with only 1% of the Jung review’s concepts and 1% of the items in the six assessments reviewed, and no representation whatsoever among the dimensions reviewed by Van Der Post et al. Interestingly, the OSC stands apart on this dimension with 6% of items dedicated to issues of recognition. The only concepts are recognition and approval, and the only items are having a good reputation and offering praise for good performance, both contributed by the scale of O’Reilly et al. (1991). The near-total absence of this fundamental human need underscores the value of beginning with a structured model to hold the concepts in question.

Motives of the Spiritual Domain

Justice and Injustice

The spiritual domain represents the opposite of the material domain. If the material domain is fundamentally about visible and tangible reality, the spiritual domain concerns the world of ideas and ideals. The foundational level of the spiritual domain is the need for fairness and justice, the idea that good is rewarded and bad is punished. At least five major motivational systems include the justice motive, especially those addressing moral development (e.g., those of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Michael Lerner, Paul Bloom, Jonathan Haidt, Joshua Greene; Pincus, 2022a). Colquitt et al. (2001) have reviewed the extensive literature on organizational justice research, which has emerged as a separate subdiscipline. Surprisingly, in the wake of a host of front-page news concerning social justice, the need for justice receives consistently few mentions in the organizational culture literature, 2 to 4% of dimensions and 0 to 3% of items. Among the justice-related dimensions are collectivism, fairness of compensation, gender egalitarianism, and rewards and punishments. Justice-related items include fairness, I can trust my supervisor to be fair in dealing with all staff, respect for the individual’s rights, rule orientation, there is clear agreement about the right way and the wrong way to do things, and tolerance.

Ethics and Wrongdoing

The next level of the spiritual domain is the need for ethical conduct, striving for behavior to be consistent with normative moral values, which are built on a scaffold of basic justice. At least five major motivational systems include this need and tend to be those focused on moral development (e.g., those of Lawrence Kohlberg, C. Daniel Batson, Erving Staub, Jonathan Haidt, and Immanuel Kant; Pincus, 2022a). In sharp contrast to the need for justice, the need for ethics is well-populated by both organizational culture dimensions and items. This need is represented by 8 to 9% of dimensions and 15 to 18% of items. Among ethics-related dimensions are customer-focus (vs. self-interest), open communication, practicing what is preached, standards and values, taking responsibility, trust, valuing ethics and honesty, and work ethic. Among ethics-related items are notions of accountability, honesty, integrity, shared values successful problem resolution, transparency, trust, and willingness to share information.

Higher Purpose and Materialism

The peak of the spiritual domain is represented by the highest and most noble striving, the need to serve a higher mission or purpose. The need for a transcendent higher purpose is featured in at least five major motivational-developmental systems, a list that includes the work of Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, William James, Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, and Lawrence Kohlberg (Pincus, 2022a). In terms of the amount of representation, this need falls in between the need for justice and the need for ethics. Seven to 8% of organizational culture dimensions speak to this need, and 7% of the six reviewed assessments; here, the OSC is the outlier with only 3% of items. Dimensions include shared sense of purpose, clarity of direction, long-term focus, future orientation, goal integration, mission, shared vision, and transformational. Items include a clear guiding philosophy, a clear mission that gives meaning and direction to our work, and I capture the imagination and emotional commitment of others when I talk about my vision of the future.

Implications for Theory

The problem of clearly defining and operationalizing the concept of organizational culture is well-documented (Glisson, 2007; Jung et al., 2009; Kalaiarasi & Sethuram, 2017; Schneider et al., 2013; Van Der Post et al., 1997). As reported by Schneider et al. (2013), part of the reason for the failure to clearly articulate this construct may be the latitude and flexibility; a loose definition affords the potential culture consultant, who is free to stretch or trim the concept as they see fit. We argue that whatever the benefit to practitioners to operate without boundaries, the costs of unclear definitions far outweigh the gains. By neglecting to ground organizational culture concepts within an overarching theory, the field has experienced concept proliferation as suggested by the 186 concepts identified by Jung et al. (2009) and the 114 identified by Van Der Post et al. (1997), with almost no consistency among the various models. Such conceptual “whiteout conditions” make it impossible to find one’s way amidst the blizzard of overlapping concepts and represent a failure to address the essential nature of organizational culture. Organizational culture acts as a kind of values template that comes into being upon the founding of an organization and continues to be modified over time goes on; as the organization makes its values clear through its statements, branding, actions, policies, and procedures. If culture is the DNA template, its expression in values acts as the RNA transcript which guides management toward valuing and investing in certain things while avoiding others, leading to a set of things the organization does well and is known for. These things it does well are environmental affordances that, to different degrees, satisfy the needs of its employees, customers, and humanity at large. It is at this intersection of need fulfillment that the real action takes place, in the relative fulfillment of the twelve emotional needs.

The most significant contribution of the application of the matrix is its ability to clean up and organize the endless parade of concepts. We have hopefully accomplished that goal and gone further by clearly distinguishing between exogenous, environmental variables and endogenous, psychological variables, as well as their different degrees of abstraction. It is our hope that we have provided a comprehensive, structured framework for thinking about organizational culture that may slow the pace of concept proliferation as new constructs can be categorized among similar constructs in shared cells of the matrix.

A secondary advantage accruing from the application of the matrix is the ability to judge the degree that each of the twelve needs are covered in theory (i.e., in terms of dimensions) and in measurement (i.e., in terms of assessment items). As suggested, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the need for recognition and justice. These important underrepresented themes can now be easily identified and added to future theory and measurement development.

The emotional needs matrix further postulates that every need can operate as either a promotion or prevention need. Theory development has tended to stumble over this distinction, with certain needs well-covered by negatives (i.e., conflict as the opposite of safety, lacking authority as the opposite of autonomy; and aggression as the opposite of caring), while others are assessed only in their positive expression. Because they are experienced differently and demand different treatments, it is our hope that future theory and measurement will formally distinguish between promotion and prevention needs.

We hope that this paper can assist theory development through the definition of a general theory of individual well-being that is comprised of every higher-order human need (Pincus, 2022a). Our model of emotional needs is represented by a pyramid, with the life domains on its four faces, arranged as pairs of opposites—self–social and material–spiritual. Using a metaphor of distance, our model predicts that there will be stronger associations among adjacent domains (e.g., self–material–social) and weaker associations for antipodal domains (self–social and material–spiritual), a proposition garnering substantial strong theoretical and empirical support (Kohlberg & Power, 1981; Mahoney et al., 2005; Pincus, 2023b).

It is worth noting that past research on cultural effects has identified the following two recurring polarities:

  • The first polarity addresses culture’s emphasis on the needs of the self vs. communal needs. A great deal of research has demonstrated that the fulfillment of communal needs is associated with well-being in communalistic societies, whereas the fulfillment of one’s own needs is associated with well-being in individualistic societies (Kitayama & Markus, 2000; Kitayama et al., 2000; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Oishi & Diener, 2009).

  • The second polarity addresses the culture’s emphasis on materialism vs. idealism as values. This polarity is associated with the degree of industrialization of societies such that industrialized societies tend to value materialism, whereas less traditional societies place greater value on idealism (Oishi, 2000; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999; Chirkov et al., 2003).

Across the many reviews of the culture literature, these two polarities are the most often cited distinctions (Tov & Diener, 2009). Our model of emotional needs suggests that these polarities are not arbitrary but instead reflect the fundamental axes that define all higher-order human needs. As such, they are the essential tradeoffs of human existence: the extent to which we focus on our own needs vs. the needs of others and the degree to which we focus on here-and-now materialism vs. abstract ideals.

A goal for future research will be to describe the way that emotional needs interact with relative degrees of fulfillment by organizations to promote important outcomes such as increasing perceptions that the culture is healthy, as well as improved employee well-being and engagement. Our model posits that this kind of progress necessarily moves in a process of de-centering from the individual’s focus on themselves to the external world to the social world to the world of principles. As needs are met, further progression involves transcending the definitions of each need as all twelve needs begin to fuse together, i.e., what brings a feeling of achievement also provides an example of ethical behavior, and what brings a sense of security also provides justice for others; what provides a feeling of authenticity also provides respect.

Implications for Methods

Mirroring the measurement woes of the subjective well-being field, research in organizational culture has struggled to develop measurement approaches that circumvent the limitations presented by reliance on written statements with numerical rating scales. Because of its affective, nonverbal nature, like the concepts of well-being, engagement, and motivation, we believe there is much promise in the use of images rather than words to measure cultural states and effects. Image-based emotional measurement has a long history stretching back to the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test (Pincus, 2023a).

Because of the sensitive nature of employee ratings of organizational culture, there is also the significant problem of “fake-ability” of response, particularly among employees who fear that their responses could be identified and among managers who may not wish to make radical changes to current practices. Ideally, organizational culture conditions and effects would be measurable using approaches that limit the ability to filter, control, and fake responses. One research tradition seeking this goal involves tests of implicit associations that measure the response latency of different pairings to reveal implicit mental associations. At the other end of the continuum are biological markers of well-being and brain activity. We argue that these kinds of measures may be useful for measuring the ultimate consequences of organizational culture but do not measure its causes or the state of culturally influenced well-being or engagement itself.

We argue that a fundamental reorientation to measuring states and effects of organizational culture is needed. Assuming that the effect of organizational culture is felt in need fulfillment, a motivational–emotional process, then reliance on numerically rated verbal statements is inherently flawed because these approaches necessitate rational, analytical thinking, not emotions or feelings. Fortunately, alternative approaches, collectively referred to as “System 1” approaches, are constructed to circumvent cognitive filters, permitting direct measurement of motivational–emotional processes. System 1 technique includes brain imaging (e.g., fMRI and EEG), psychophysiological measures (e.g., facial coding, galvanic skin response, eye tracking, cardiac functioning, and respiration), and scalable indirect measures of motivational-emotional meaning (e.g., time-constrained, image-based elicitation; Pincus, 2023a). Because organizational culture effects and conditions are experienced primarily through emotional channels, measuring these effects necessitates methods that mirror its affective nature.

Implications for Practice

We argue that the conspicuous absence of a meta-theoretical framework has limited both organizational culture theory development and measurement. By organizing the hundreds of items and dimensions that have been offered within a single unified framework, we hope this will be of value, not just to theorists, but also to practitioners, who need to describe their frameworks and measures to clients.

As an example of the benefits of starting with a clear meta-theory, we review the case of a particularly influential model of organizational culture, the first ever described, by Jaques (1951). Jaques listed seven principles (p. 127), to which we have added the corresponding emotional needs in our model (in parentheses):

  1. 1.

    Work for everyone at a level consistent with their working capacity (immersion), values (ethics), and interests (authenticity).

  2. 2.

    Opportunity for everyone to progress as his or her capability matures, within the opportunities available (potential).

  3. 3.

    Fair and just treatment for everyone (justice), including fair pay based on equitable pay differentials (justice) and merit recognition (recognition) related to personal effectiveness appraisal (success).

  4. 4.

    Leadership interaction between managers and subordinates (inclusion, caring).

  5. 5.

    Clear articulation of accountability and authority (autonomy).

  6. 6.

    Articulation of long-term organizational vision through direct communication from the top (purpose).

  7. 7.

    Opportunity for everyone individually or through representatives to participate in policy development (safety and inclusion).

Astoundingly, this, the very first formal description of organizational culture, references all 12 needs in the matrix. It could be argued that all the critical dimensions have been hiding in plain sight for over 70 years.

We believe there are substantial benefits derived from the structure of our model. It categorizes needs by life domains and levels of striving, presenting needs in a hierarchical order. It suggests which need fulfillments support progression in each domain, and those that can be expected to naturally co-occur, as opposed to those that have the potential to act in potential opposition to each other. Because of its structural assumptions, it can be used to generate testable hypotheses, to help understand the impact of interventions on sets of needs. Beginning with a holistic meta-theory based on first principles can make life easier for theorists, researchers, and practitioners by providing a common framework that ensures that all fundamental concepts are equally represented.

Limitations and Recommendations

The primary limitation of this study pertains to the scope of the analysis, which focused on mainstream, positivistic conceptualizations of organizational culture. There are alternative theoretical traditions stemming primarily from work in cultural psychology, which tend to emphasize the importance of the interplay between individual psychology and the social environment in co-creating culturesFootnote 9. We see no conflict between our categorical approach to understanding the human needs that are served (or fail to be served) by culture and the alternative tradition focusing on the interactionist ontogeny of culture. Regardless of the processes by which cultural values are formed, maintained, and evolved, the set of higher-order human needs they can serve remain unchanged. The dynamic forces that co-create culture will always require tradeoffs between intra-individual needs (e.g., the need for security vs. taking the risks required for growth), as well as tradeoffs between the needs of different individuals (e.g., a worker’s need for purpose and a manager’s need to show profit), and between individuals and the needs of the organization (e.g., the individual’s need for autonomy and authenticity vs. the organization’s need for standardization and singularity of focus).

Another limitation concerns our desire to link environmental affordances with the needs they can fulfill. Unquestionably, needs cannot be linked to environmental affordances in a rigid one-to-one manner because both exist in many-to-many relationships, i.e., any particular affordance can potentially meet multiple needs and any particular need can potentially be met by multiple affordances. Although such a matrix linking needs to affordances would be complex, we believe such an endeavor is possible and would be worthwhile as it could connect individual needs to sets of relevant supports. An important consideration in drawing such linkages is the fact that environmental affordances come into being as a result of perceived needs. The set of supports provided by a given culture should come into being through a process of co-creation between workers and management, whereby needs are identified and prioritized for fulfillment. This is what ought to occur; however, we have seen little evidence of systematic assessment of higher-order emotional needs in organizations to date.

Our recommendations flow directly from this observation. Organizations tend to presume that they understand the needs of the individuals that together make up the organization, yet they can provide little to no evidence of such understanding. What is clear is that organizational culture has become a hot-button issue because of the failure of organizations to properly understand the needs of their constituents and customers, as evidenced by scandals and low, single-digit utilization of the kinds of support organizations tend to offer (e.g., Employee Assistance Programs). We urge policymakers to use our framework as a basis for measuring the needs of individuals and for identifying the support needed to meet these needs.

Conclusion

This paper responds to the need for integration of the vast array of dimensions and concepts springing up in the organizational culture literature. A meta-theory is proposed that can encompass the constantly growing list of organizational culture constructs based on a core set of 12 human emotional needs. There is a critical need for a solid theory in this area because substantial resources are being diverted to address serious life and death issues traced to failures of organizational culture, and without a sensible comprehensive framework, there is a significant risk that measurement approaches and interventions will be inconsistent and “hit-or-miss.”