An Action Design Research on development and deployment of a computer-based group discussion support tool for achieving consensus and culture change at an educational institution

Organisational culture change is a long and complex process that typically takes years to complete and has a very low success rate. This project addresses the problem by the proposed use of an Action Design Research Methodology to build and deploy an IT artifact named Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument-Spilter (OCAI-Spilter) to speed up cultural change while reducing failure rate. OCAI-Spilter should be able to fast-track culture change by addressing the problem of scalability and process losses encountered in most change projects involving large numbers of people. We used an iterative prototyping process to continuously refine the tool in use. We also reviewed the design principles in Action Research Design to improve the usability of the tool. New design principles and learning were derived from this process. Finally, we showed the effectiveness of the artifact by measuring the results of the tool in use through culture surveys and alignment, as well as idea generation that was administered through the tool.