CULTURAL INSTITUTIONALISM and the ECONOMY

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CULTURAL INSTITUTIONALISM and the ECONOMY
Economic sociologists have long recognized that
various cultural institutions shape forms and
processes of markets organizations
Why is giving gifts to children acceptable, but
buying automobiles for college athletes
forbidden? What if a surrogate mother decides
instead to keep her baby?
When should blood be donated or sold? Should
housewives/husbands be paid? Can children divorce
their parents? Why can you legally buy a massage,
but not the sexual services of a prostitute? Do
you agree that He who steals my purse steal
trash/But he that filches from me my good
name/Robs me of that which not enriches him/And
makes me poor indeed? How much would you pay to
restore a tarnished reputation?
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Culture Club
Culture is the central theoretical concept of
anthropology
A system of shared beliefs, values, customs,
behaviours, and artifacts that the members of
society use to cope with their world and with one
another, and that are transmitted from generation
to generation through learning. Franz Boas.
1911. The Mind of Primitive Man. NY Macmillan.
The symbols-and-meanings approach to culture
examines the system of such publicly and
collectively accepted meanings operating for a
given group at a given time (Andrew M. Pettigrew
1979574).
Participants within a culture use its symbols and
communication processes to produce and reproduce
shared values, attitudes, beliefs, customs, and
patterns of language thought that are
transmitted in their symbolic forms.
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Economic Anthropology
Economic anthropologists study pre-industrial
societies, where kinship institutions dominate
production is for use, not a market.
Stephen Gudeman sees livelihoods as culturally
constructed. He tries to represent the peoples
own economic construction, their mental maps of
such concepts as exchange, property, and profit.
Panamanian peasants dont exchange to make
profits but for an exchange of equivalents,
where a goods value is defined by expenses to
produce it. Only outside merchants make profits
in from the community, a mystery to the peasants
how they did so.
Economic values and normative practices of
nonmarket societies are constrained by customs,
habits, traditions and are often closely tied to
religious rituals e.g., planting and harvesting
ceremonies. In non-monetized social systems,
barter is the primary form of exchange. Gift
transactions acquire symbolic meanings for
communal integration, as in the Northwest
Kwakiutl Indians potlatch feasts the Kula Ring.
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The Kula Ring
Kula Ring is a network of visits and gift
exchanges that foster life-long social solidarity
among the Trobriand Islanders (Malinowski (1922).
Participants travel hundreds of miles over sea in
open canoes to exchange two Kula valuables red
shell-disc necklaces (veigun) circle the ring in
clockwise and white shell armbands (mwali) trade
counter-clockwise. If an opening gift is
armband, then closing gift must be necklace and
vice versa. Gifts dont stay permanently, but
pass continuously among thousands of partners.
Kula valuables are non-use items traded purely to
enhance ones social status, honor nobility.
Marcel Mauss (1922) described the givers act as
a display of greatness, in which the giver must
show an exaggerated modesty by down-playing the
gifts value. Kula partnerships forge strong
obligations of hospitality, protection, and
mutual assistance. The Kula is a solemn exchange
ceremony, not to be conducted like the hard
bartering that accompanies Kula journeys and
serves purely economic purposes.
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The Philosophy of Money
As money replaced barter, it transformed other
forms of social relations. Apart from its
economic exchange functions, money symbolizes and
embodies the modern spirit of rationality,
calculability, and impersonality.
In The Philosophy of Money, George Simmel
(1858-1918) analyzed how the cash nexus dissolves
bonds of blood and loyalty. Money gives people
the freedom to exercise an individualized control
that is impossible in the traditional societies
ascribed identities are discarded. While
individual freedom greatly increases, it also
creates new social problems such as alienation,
fragmentation, and identity formation.
Money ultimately determines the worth of all
cultural objects. Simmel saw a tragedy of
culture where social forms inevitably oppose the
energies and interests of life. Metropolitan
life is nervous, over-refined, blasé, the source
of a typically problematical predicament of
modern man the feeling of being oppressed by an
infinity of elements of culture because he can
neither incorporate them into his own personal
culture nor - because they are potential objects
of his subjective culture - can he simply ignore
or reject them.
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The Social Meaning of Money
Viviana Zelizer analyzed money as a social medium
shaped by personal networks. Money lies at the
intersection of the sacred and the profane
charity, sexual intimacies, life insurance
settlements (e.g., 9/11) ...
Value depends on how money is exchanged as
compensation for services, entitlement, or gift.
She contrasts opposing perspectives Nothing-But
(rational exchange), Hostile Worlds (moral
indignation), with Crossroads (multiple ties
between social processes economic components).
Zelizer used archival records from 1870-1930
court cases, immigrant memoirs, etiquette books,
vaudevilles, women's magazine ads, popular
household manuals to uncover a fundamental
transformation in "domestic, gift and charitable
monies. Families, individuals, businesses,
and governments reshaped money into a
personalized vehicle by earmarking specific funds
and inventing myriad new currencies ranging from
housekeeping allowances, "pin money, and gift
certificates to tips, bonuses, Christmas club
savings accounts, food stamps.
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Corporate Culture Dynamics
Edgar Schein developed a Assumptions-Values-Artifa
cts model of corporate culture, a variable
internal to an organization that explains its
work-related structures, practices, outcomes.
Mary Jo Hatch added Symbols and specified that
four bi-directional influence processes link the
four elements in the AVAS model.
Organizational cultures change thru interplay of
four clockwise counter-clockwise influences,
evolving over time and generating a spiraling
double-helix
VALUES
Realization
Manifestation
ASSUMPTIONS
ARTIFACTS
Symbolization
Interpretation
SYMBOLS
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Values Assumptions
Assumptions and Values are deep-structure
elements Assumptions taken-for-granted beliefs
about reality human nature Values social
principles, philosophies, goals, and standards
considered to have intrinsic worth
Manifestation occurs when specific values,
behavioral norms are evoked perceptually,
cognitively, or emotionally Realization occurs
when values are expressed in outcomes or acts

• 3M Corp describes itself as a Culture of
  Innovation
• What underlying assumptions does 3M make
  regarding human creativity and learning
  capabilities?
• How are those assumptions manifested as values
  of employees in RD dept, product marketing,
  human resource management?
• Which orgl artifacts express 3Ms values
  (e.g., award ceremonies)?

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Artifacts Symbols
Artifacts and Symbols are surface components of
orgl culture Artifacts the visible, tangible
and audible results of activity that are grounded
in values and assumptions Symbols anything that
represents a conscious or unconscious association
with some wider, usually more abstract, concept
or meanings
Symbolization translates artifacts into symbols,
linking an artifacts literal meaning to its
subjective meanings Interpretation links previous
assumptions to possibilities for new symbolic
understandings
What symbolic meanings do you attach to these
artifacts? Have their meanings changed as result
of recent events?
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Strong Culture ? Performance Control

• Strong Corp Culture enthusiasm emerged in 1980s
  academic practitioner writings (e.g., Peters
  Waterman In Search of Excellence)
• General orgl mission statement sustains high
  member commitments
• Strong culture provides guidelines for effective
  actions
• Source of meanings member identity (1950s IBM
  organization men)
•  
• Strong cultures produce superior individual
  collective performances?
• Exemplars 3M, IBM, Kodak, HP Nonexemplars
  Enron, K-Mart, etc
• Strong culture is difficult to
  imitate/transplant the competitive advantage
  lies in the rarity of reproducing strong cultures
  inside most orgs

• Strong culture is a social control mechanism for
  reducing supervision
• Origins in an entrepreneurial leaders values,
  norms, vision
• Learning an org culture Recruiting
  socializing newcomers to inculcate commitment
  (Military boot camp cult indoctrination
  monastic rituals)
• Validation, reinforcement through folklore,
  stories, legends, interpreting orgl history as
  consistent with its cultural values

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Organizational Subcultures

• Subcultures Given evident ambiguities held by
  many organizational participants, assuming a
  unitary corporate culture is questionable
•  
• Orgl subcultures arise and persist, especially
  among diverse occupational communities that make
  differing, conflicting assumptions about the most
  important values to uphold
• Alternative values, interests, and competing
  occupational commitments overwhelm participants
  conformity to a single corporate culture
• Many participants resist the culture identity
  imposed by the orgs dominant coalition (the
  owners and top managers)

• Schein identified three conflicting subcultures
  inside many companies, whose integration requires
  orgs to understand better how these occupational
  communities learn and interact.
• What incompatible assumptions and values are held
  by
• Executives in charge of overall corporate
  strategy
• Engineers professionals engaged in research
  design
• Operators direct production service
  activities

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References
Gudeman, Stephen. 1986. Economics as Culture
Models and Metaphors of Livelihood. London
Routledge. Hatch, Mary Jo. 1993. The Dynamics
of Organizational Culture. Academy of Management
Review 18657-693.   Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1920.
Kula the Circulating Exchange of Valuables in
the Archipelagoes of Eastern New Guinea. Man 20
97-105. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts
of the Western Pacific An Account of Native
Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of
Melanesian New Guinea. London Routledge.
Mauss, M.arcel. 1922. The Gift Forms and
Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies,
London Routledge. Pettigrew, Andrew M. 1979.
On Studying Organizational Cultures.
Administrative Science Quarterly
24570-581. Schein, Edgar H. . 1990.
Organizational Culture. American Psychologist
45(2)109-119.