Business Acumen: Organisation Insight Scale
Nature of questionnaire: Assesses a person’s degree of assimilation of the workings of a business organisation across eight different aspects of business organisation. These include marketing, sales, human resources, technology, operations and so forth. As such, it measures business acumen.
Purpose: To determine the degree of organisational maturity achieved during working life. In this way the respondent’s level of organisational understanding or assimilation can be compared to the level that the position requires. Where a person’s understanding is well below the position requirements, a wide variety of performance problems may be experienced – most notably an inability to get to grips with how to function successfully within the organisational context. Where organisational understanding matches or exceeds position requirements, the individual is likely to perform at maximum productivity levels as no time is wasted in trying to understand or get to grips with how to navigate the systems and sub-systems of the organisational context.
Dimensions assessed are knowledge and insight pertaining to:
- Economics
- Organisation management
- Purchasing management
- Production and operations management
- Human resources management
- Marketing management
- Financial management
- Information management
Deliverable: A one-page report that indicates each dimension measured in the form of a bar chart, with descriptions interpreting low and high scores.
Question type: The OIS consists of 80 questions, with three alternative answers for each question, only one of which is correct. The respondent chooses the one which s/he believes is the correct answer.
Duration: 20 minutes
Application: Useful in making selection, placement and promotional decisions, but especially so in determining organisationally related training needs. Applicable to new entrants into the work arena, as well as to non-managerial staff and those at supervisory level. Minimum requirement is English literacy at secondary school level.
Research: While the OIS is not strictly speaking a cognitive test, research conducted in our client companies indicates that the OIS achieves higher predictive validity statistics (correlation of scores with performance and position level) than most cognitive tests.