Miles and Snow’s 4 Cultural Types 19 / 19

The 4 Cultural Types are:

  1. Prospectors

    Prospectors are organisations characterised by a focus on results (doing the right things, i.e. effectiveness). They strive to expand and increase market share, and move into new areas

  2. Analysers

    Analysers try to balance risk and profits. They rely on a portfolio of dependable products and markets as a source of revenue, like defenders, but seek to move into new markets that prospectors have already opened up. Analysers follow change, but do not initiate it.

  3. Defenders

    Defenders take low risks, prefer secure niche markets, and tried and trusted solutions. They have cultures whose stories and rituals emphasise historical continuity and consensus. Decision making is quite formalised. (Efficiency is prioritised). Employees are recruited from within the industry.

  4. Reactors

    Reactors do not have any fixed, enduring strategies, other than living from “hand to mouth”. They simply respond to external demands and changes as they arise.