Findings
Hypothesis 4
Hypothesis 4 stated that technical, professional and administrative staff in municipalities in their early birthand growing stages will perceive significantly less gap inactual versus desired norm of Social Relationship than their counterparts in municipalities that are more than twenty years of age.
A t-test of differences in means was used to measure the statistical significance of differences in culture gap scores on Social Relationships between staffs in community development and planning department in municipalities that are in their early birth and growing stages and those that are more than twenty years of age.
Table 10 shows results of means scores of actual norms, designed norms, and culture-gap of the younger/growing cities and the older/mature cities.
As shown in table 10, the desired norms means score of young/growing cities is 6.0909, the actual norms means score of young/growing cities is 6.1515, and the culture-gap means score is -.06. The desired norms means score of older/mature city is 6.4000, the actual norms means score of older/mature cities is 5.3000, and the culture-gap means score is 1.1000.The results of t test are shown in table 10, and are interpreted as follows:
The result shows a t value of –2.550. The critical value (CV) is ±2.000 at an alpha (a) of .05 (Jaccard 1997, 562), and p value of .013. Since the probabilities are smaller than the level of significance at 0.05, the t-test results show that the technical, professional and administrative staff in municipalities in their early birth and growing stage do perceive significantly less gap in actual versus desired norm of Social Relationship than their counterparts in municipalities that are more than twenty years of age. Thus, the null hypothesis of no difference can be rejected and the study hypothesis 4 is supported. The technical, professional and administrative staff in municipalities in their early birth and growing stages will perceive significantly less gap in actual versus desired norm of Social Relationship than their counterparts in municipalities that are more than twenty years of
age.Kilmann-Saxton Interpretation of Culture-Gap Score in Social Relationship
An analysis of the culture-gap score of younger/growing cities and older/mature cities using the guidelines presented earlier by Kilmann-Saxton indicates Social Relationships, with the averaged scores -.06 of the young/growing city and the averaged scores 1.1000 of the older/mature city are not considered as significant culture-gaps score occur in younger/growing cities of -.06 should not be considered seriously as culture problem.
Hypothesis 5
Hypothesis 5 stated that technical, professional and administrative staff in municipalities in their early birth and growing stages will perceive significantly less gap in actual versus desired norm of Personal Freedom than their counterparts in municipalities that are more than twenty years of age.
A t-test of differences in means was used to measure the statistical significance of differences in culture gap scores on Personal Freedom between staffs in community development and planning department in municipalities that are in their early birth and growing stages and those that are more than twenty years of age. Table 11 shows results of means scores of actual norms, designed norms, and culture-gap of the younger/growing cities and the older/mature cities.
As shown in table 11, the desired norms means score of young/growing cities is 3.7576, the actual norms means score of young/growing cities is 3.3333, and the culture-gap means score is .4242. The desired norms means score of older/mature city is 3.5333, the actual norms means score of older/mature cities is 3.2667, and the culture-gap means score is .2667.The results of t test are shown in table 12, and are interpreted as follows:
The result shows a t value of .294. The critical value (CV) is ±2.000 at an alpha (a) of .05 (Jaccard 1997, 562), and p value of 0.770. Since the probabilities are greater than the level of significance at 0.05, the t-test results show that the technical,professional and administrative staff in municipalities in their early birth and growing stage do not perceive significantly less gap in actual versus desired norm of Personal Freedom than their counterparts in municipalities that are more than twenty years of age. Thus, the null hypothesis of no difference cannot be rejected and the study hypothesis 3 is not supported.
Kilmann-Saxton Interpretation of Culture-Gap Score in Personal Freedom
An analysis of the culture-gap score of younger/growing cities and older/mature cities using the guidelines presented earlier by Kilmann-Saxton indicates Personal Freedom, with the averaged scores +0.4242 of the young/growing city and the averaged scores +0.2667 of the older/mature city are not considered as significant culture-gaps. According to Kilmann-Saxton, culture gap scores in excess of +1 must be reported for there is no exist a significant problem. Neither culture gap score is sufficiently in excess of +2 for management to be concerned (Kilmann-Saxton 1997, 16).
Summary
This above presented the findings of the study regarding research question 1 and 2, the demographics data of municipal organizations in Southern California was used to determine the change of the cities in their stage of growth over the time. The statistical method of ANOVA results shows there was a statistically significant difference in percent of population changes between young and mature cities and young and growing cities in two of the nine years. However, there were no significant differences in the remaining seven years. There were no significant differences between the three groups of cities in the percent of revenue changes in any of the nine years. Therefore, the null hypothesis cannot be rejected and study hypothesis one was not supported. Municipal organizations in their early birth (under 10 years of age) do not exhibit significantly more growth in revenue and population from year to year than municipal organizations that are in their growth stage (over 10 years of age) and their mature stage (over 20 years of age.) Also, municipal organizations in their growth stage (over 10 years of age) do not exhibit more growth in revenue and population than municipal organizations that are in their mature stage (over 20 years
of age).
The Kilmann-Saxton Culture-Gap Instrument was utilized, in conjunction with an Independent t-Test, to determine if there were significance differences in the culture-gap scores of Task Support, Task Innovation, Social Relationships and Personal Freedom between administrative, professional, and technical personnel working in community development and planning departments in younger/growing cities and older/mature cities. The results of the study indicated that a significant difference was found in one of the three cultural elements, that of Social Relationships. There were no significant differences found in the remaining three elements of Task Support, Task Innovation or Personal Freedom. Hence, the null hypothesis of no difference cannot be rejected in hypotheses 2, 3, and 5 but can be rejected in hypothesis 4. Therefore, study hypothesis 4 which stated that technical, professional and administrative staff in municipalities in their early birth and growing stages will perceive significantly less gap in actual versus desired norm of Social Relationship than their counterparts in municipalities that are more than twenty years of age was supported by the study.
The Kilmann-Saxton Instrument interpretation was also used to determine whether any of the culture gap scores registered by staff in young/growing cities and older/mature cities were large enough to be of concern to the cities leadership. The analysis indicates that the average scores of Task Innovation, Task Support, Social Relationship and Personal Freedom of older/mature cities are wider than those of young/growing city, but the gaps in neither case were large enough to be of concern by management in these municipal organizations.
The study provides some evidence for the predicted existence of a life cycle in municipal organizations and of a difference in the culture-gap related to this life cycle. However, the evidence is slight for both and far from conclusive. Conclusions reached in the study and their implications and recommendations for future research and for practitioners are presented in the next section.
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