Mid Sweden University

PurposeResearch has underscored the significance of quality culture in relation to employee performance and stakeholder value. This study aims to develop and assess an extended quality culture framework to align quality culture with organisational values and further identify positions and transformations of quality cultures in organisations through behaviours. Through knowledge of the variation among employee behaviour preferences, it is plausible to increase the organisation's awareness of its current progress in quality cultural transformations.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a holistic multiple-case study design, encompassing three cases in a county that encompasses 12 municipalities. Drawing on prior research, an extended quality framework was tested through a survey to test and evaluate constructs that measure quality culture using vignettes based on organisational values operationalised as behaviours.FindingsThis study examines the relationship between organisational values and quality culture. It extends quality culture measurement research by operationalising an organisation's values as sustainable behaviours in practice. Combining preferences of behaviours with variations among employees across different values can increase the awareness of the organisation's progress in quality culture transformations with four different positions in terms of their status. Moreover, these four combinations follow different positions with respect to transformations along a quality culture continuum.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the discourse on interpreting and managing quality culture by focusing on organisational values and their expression as behaviours. Moreover, it contributes to the micro-level aspects of quality culture, linking values to the core operations to foster sustainable behaviour within organisations.