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The Competing Values Framework:

An Introduction

The Competing Values Framework (CVF) has been named as one of the fifty most important

models in the history of business. It originally emerged from empirical research on the question

of what makes organizations effective (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983). It has since been

extended as a framework that makes sense of high performance in regards to numerous topics

in the social sciences and organizations. The CVF has been studied and tested in organizations

for more than twenty five years by a group of thought leaders from leading business schools

and corporations. It has been the topic of many books and papers and it has been employed in

the improvement of thousands of organizations.

Though the framework is most often thought of as a leadership tool it has shown to have many

important advantages. The CVF can be used for all aspects and levels in organizations. For

example, It can be applied to personal style, yet the same framework can also be used to

assess communication, leadership, organizational culture, core competencies, decision making,

motivation, human resources practices, quality, employee selection, organizational capabilities,

organizational change patterns, strategy, financial performance and many others. A person can

use the language and concepts of competing values to work with people on issues at many

different levels. This allows an organization to integrate its work around a common language

and framework.

The CVF serves primarily as a map, an organizing mechanism, a sense-making device, a

source of new ideas, and a learning system. From the CVF comes a theory about how these

various aspects of organizations function in simultaneous harmony and tension with one

another. The framework helps identify a set of guidelines that can help leaders diagnose and

manage the interrelationships, congruencies, and contradictions among these different aspects

of organizations. In other words,...