All cultural environments are subject to an operational framework which the stakeholders use to interact with each other.
In organizational groups the cultural is formed by the members of the group and how it well it operates is guided by how each component of the basic operational framework is practiced (or not).
The Operational Framework
Here is a picture of the four basic operational components intrinsic to any basic culture
Whether written or just intuitively understood the most basic cultural attribute your internal organization must have are rules. These can be called team norms, they can be policies, they can be government enforced laws or a variety of other types of standards. All of these have one thing in common, they guide behavior.
Any combination of these forms of rules/standards can co-exist, the key is they need to be supported by some authority (whether is by the taking of personal accountability or enforcement through discipline.)
Ultimately disagreement or misunderstanding of rules – where they were not well communicated or its not clear that they exist can result in an interpretation process, which usually requires a judge.
Cultural and Organizational Maturity
The level of maturity applied by the members of the cultural group to the ongoing management of behavior both within and outside these rules can be a key measure of organizational maturity.
Typically high performing cultures/groups/ teams demonstrate an intrinsic understanding of this framework by each member of the team and this results in efficient and effective interactions and resulting team outcomes.
Can I use this framework to create improvement
One continuous improvement approach can be to assess your organizations culture against this framework to identify the weak areas or behaviors so that they can be addressed.
For example are there too many rules, too few, are they well or badly understood, is they little personal accountability taken, or too much personal accountability is applied versus consistent discipline and so on.