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瑞典论文  Organizations, Culture, and Ideology

As research and writing on organizational cultures have expanded and resulted in numerous research projects and publications, a number of problems with this approach have become apparent. Within the re- search area—which must be understood as "several approaches travel- ling uneasily under a single banner"'—there are, of course, a number of varying positions and debates. More or less generalizable forms of critique against different starting points, focuses, discourses, and ways of formulating the matter have been raised [1].

I shall consider here primarily some basic problems that much of the literature reveals. These problems concern, among other things, the fruitfulness of juxtaposing an organization and a culture, the social context of organi- zations, the issue of consensus-conflict in organizations, and the preci- sion of some key concepts commonly used in "culture and symbolism" studies of organizations. Much might be said about the lack of clarity in the use of concepts in these subjects, but I shall here elaborate on only one aspect: What is meant by "culture" in studies of organizations and business? Some representative definitions of culture in organization theory are relevant. Louis [2] is ofthe opinion that "Culture. . .refers to a shared system of values, norms and symbols. The term culture conveys an entire image, an integrated set of dimensions/characteristics and the whole beyond the parts."

Bate [3] answers the question "What is organizational culture?" by stating that it is "predominantly implicit in the minds of men" and that it is "shared—it refers to the ideas, meanings and values people hold in common and to which they sub- scribe collectively." Trice and Beyer [4] offer a similar definition, but stress two components of a culture: "(1) its substance, or the networks of meanings contained in its ideologies, norms, and values; (2) its forms, or the practices whereby these meanings are expressed, af- firmed, and communicated to members." Pettigrew [5] points out that the culture gives people a sense of what the reality in a particular setting is all about so that they can act in relation to it: "Culture is the system of. . .publicly and collectively accepted meanings operating for a given group at a given time." Lastly, Morgan [6], in describing organizational culture, writes: "Shared meaning, shared understand- ing, and shared sense-making are all different ways of describing culture. In talking about culture we are really talking about a process of reality construction that allows people to see and understand particular events, actions, objects, utterances, or situations in distinctive ways."