The IT Service Management "Service Culture" Defined

In the last entry, we discussed the "Service Culture" as the skillset required to achieve organizational maturity - specifically in the realm of IT Service Management.  That discussion resulted in this question: what exactly is meant by "Service Culture."  There are many opinions, but none that can be called "scholarly," which means it is a result of research and peer review.

Perhaps now there is an answer; or at least a scholarly approach to the answer.  The Organizational Culture Domain ©  (Granito, 2011) has been developed as an add on to existing maturity models to extend and compliment those models and answer the question: "What is meant by Service Culture."

The Organizational Culture Domain (OCD) ©  consists of eight components:

• Organizational Tension - The basic trust in a change or upheaval and the amount of "mourning" the organization requires for the old way
• Coordination and Communication - The need for or extent to which key departments and individuals work together to improve the organization
• Organizational Commitment - Convincing those in the organization to be committed to the new vision and their roles in achieving it
• Organizational Competency - Learning the analytical and interpersonal skills managers and employees will use in the Change effort
• Organizational Leadership - The demonstration by top management of visible and consistent support for change
• Management Innovation - Management support for the business application of creativity
• Organizational Innovation - A culture of continual service improvement
• Organizational Continuity - Retention of cultural fundamentals important to organizational change, such as purpose or mission, core technologies, and key resources and skills.

Each one of these components can be measured in the OCD Organizational Culture Assessment instrument © (Granito, 2011) and then assessed for "maturity" as any other domain in maturity models such as CMMI and maturity frameworks such as ITIL and CobiT.

The OCD ©  adds to CobiT:

• Delivery and Support
• Monitoring
• Planning & Organisation 
• Acquisition & Implementation
• Organizational Culture

The OCD ©  adds to IT Service Management:

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Support
• Service Operation
• Service Culture
• Continual Service Improvement

The OCD ©  also fits into CMMI - SVC as Organizational Culture Management.  All models have frameworks for assessing each domain and associated components.  So too with the OCD.  We will discuss the assessment instrument in a future post.

FG

Copyright © 2011 by Granito & Associates.  All rights reserved

Granito, F.A. (2011).  Organizational Resilience and Culture: A Model for Information Technology Service Management (ITSM).  (Doctoral Dissertation).