Cultural Approach to Organizations

1
Cultural Approach to Organizations

• Of Clifford Geertz and Micahel Pacanowsky

2
Organizations as Cultures

• Culture as system of shared meaning
• Reject notions of high culture and low culture
• Cultures have subcultures and counter-cultures
• Culture made manifest through performance the
  actions which constitute and reveal peoples
  culture (symbolic expression)
• Culture includes task and non task-related
  performance
• Performances seen as texts, available to be read
• Reading performances requires seeing an
  organization as its members experience it
  ethnographic method.

3
Ethnography

• Involves thick description based on extensive
  observation
• Posture of radical naiveté sees the
  organization as strange.
• Focuses on the non-obvious but significant,
  including language, metaphors, stories, nonverbal
  rites and rituals.

4
The Metaphor

• The ethnographer pays attention to metaphors that
  organizational participants themselves use to
  describe the organization and its practices and
• Also constructs metaphors of his/her own

5
The Story

• Ethnographers watch for the stories that
  participants tell stories/anecdotes often
  encapsulate memorable performances and values
• Three kinds of story include corporate (ideology
  of management), personal (told by employees about
  themselves), collegial (told about others in the
  organization). Collegial stories are often
  negative or positive and revealing about how
  employees think the organization really works.
• Sometimes the results of this research can be
  reported in fictional form.

6
Ritual the way it has always been

• Some rituals are texts that articulate multiple
  aspects of cultural life but they should be
  interpreted according to the meanings that they
  have for the participants

7
Practical and ethical issues

• Should managers change culture?
• Can culture be changed?
• Should ethnographers work for management?

8
Critique

• Do corporations really have cultures that are
  identifiably isolated from the culture in the
  wider society?
• Should ethnographers remain neutral in the face
  of all cultural practices? Or should they expose
  repression, wrong-doing, etc.?