Ipsative measurement and the analysis of organizational values: an alternative approach for data analysis

In this paper, the analysis and test of ipsative data will be discussed, and some alternative methods will be suggested. Following a review of the literature about ipsative measurement, the Competing Values Framework will be presented as a major application in the field of organizational culture and values. An alternative approach for the intra-individual analysis and test of ipsative data will be suggested, which consists of: (i) a method that uses closed part-wise geometric means as a descriptive statistic; (ii) a nonparametric bootstrap test to create confidence intervals; and (iii) a permutation test to evaluate equivalence between ipsative scores. All suggested methods satisfy the three basic statistical requirements for the analysis of ipsative data, that is: scale invariance, permutation invariance, and subcompositional coherence. Our suggested approach can correctly compute and compare organizational culture profiles within the same organization, as will be demonstrated with an example. However, the problem of drawing inter-organizational contrasts in ipsative measurement still remains unsolved. Also, our alternative approach only allows for a relative interpretation of the results.