The Directing Role of Governance in Establishing Proper Organizational Culture in Universities

The purpose of the present study is to validate a scale for measuring the organizational culture of higher educational institutes. The population of the study included all the staffs who were employed in all branches of Islamic Azad University in Iran (i.e., 420 branches and educational centers). The research sample consisted of 996 staffs randomly selected from 86 branches and educational centers using stratified and cluster random sampling methods. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire for organizational culture which was constructed based on the Robbin's (1996) theory with 28 items and underlying factors of individual initiative, risk tolerance, direction, integration, conflict tolerance, management contact, control, and reward system (alpha = 0.92). The results of factor analysis and principal components analysis, using a varimax rotation, showed that building blocks of organizational culture includes risk tolerance (Items 1, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, and 27), direction (Items 11, 12, 20, 21, 22 and 28), reward system (Items 3, and 4), and management contact (Items 6, and 7).