Saudi Arabian employee perceptions on organisational culture: a study across industries and private and government sectors

This paper examines the perceptions of male and female employees in Saudi Arabia regarding the informal norms and cultural dimensions that establish the culture type of an organisation. It adopts Cameron and Quinn's (1999) Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) and Douglas Kimemia's (2013) informal organisational norms questionnaire. Questionnaires were distributed and collected from 826 Saudi employees of which 694 were valid. Descriptive statistics, correlation matrix and regression were used in analysing the data. Our findings reveal that across demographic factors and industries, employees perceive that informal organisational norms do not impact and are not impacted by their organisational culture. In addition, employees with PhD degrees predominantly seek work elsewhere when examining their organisational culture. Ultimately, our data also revealed that every one of the six cultural dimensions influenced one another, consequently creating a loop of interdependency that manifests itself into the structure and culture of the organisation.