Culture & Org. (Jelineck 1983)

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Introduction: A Code ofMany Colors

Mariann Jelinek, LindaSmircich, and PaulHirsch

I 1983 by Cornell University.0001 -8392/83/2803-0331/$00.75

Kohlberg (1969) and Perry (1970) argued that moral reasoningdevelops as individualsmove from simple imperatives ( dothis; avoid that ) through more complicated analysis ( thereare criteria for analyzing moral situations ) to the ambiguous,the uncertain, and even the paradoxical and contradictory asbases for moral decision. We propose that organizationalanalysis has been evolving in the same fashion, toward morecomplex, paradoxical,and even contradictory modes of under-

standing. Instead of monochromatic thinking, we suggest aninterpretive framework more like a rainbow-a code of manycolors that tolerates alternative assumptions. Likephysicistsindealing with light, we can explain what we see as a flow ofparticles and gain some insights, or as a wave to gain others;but light itself seems to partakeof both the one and the other,rather than either or. Fororganizationalanalysis, we need to beable to perceive and understand the complex nature of organi-zational phenomena, both micro and macro, organizationalandindividual,conservative and dynamic. We need to understandorganizations in multiple ways, as having machine-like as-

pects, organism-like aspects, culture-like aspects, andothers yet to be identified. We need to encourage and use thetension engendered by multiple images of ourcomplex subject.

To the extent that our ways of looking at things becomesolidified into commonly accepted paradigms limitingwhat wepay attention to, new ideas inand of themselves can bevaluable. Cultureas a root metaphor for organization studies isone such idea, redirectingourattention away from some of thecommonly accepted importantthings (such as structure ortechnology) and toward the (untilnow) less-frequentlyexamined elements raised to importance bythe new metaphor

(such as shared understandings, norms, orvalues). Especially inconjunction with other approaches, culture may provide thecritical tension that can lead to new insight.

THE IDEAOFCULTUREAND ORGANIZATIONALANALYSIS

Cultureper se is hardlya new idea. Culturalanthropology hasbeen a specialty for years, and even in organization studies arelated notion, organizationclimate, dates back well overtwodecades. But there is something new here: this time around,researchers seem to be striving for some way to address theinteractive, ongoing, recreative aspects of organizations, be-

yond the merely rational or economic.Pettigrew (1979) noted that culture comes with a family ofconcepts like symbol, language, social drama, and ritual hathighlight organizing (ratherthan organization )as the majorfocus. We see an importantmovement in the study of organiza-tions toward the sort of interpretive paradigm posed by Bergerand Luckmann(1967). Culture-anotherword forsocial reality-is both productand process, the shaperof human interactionand the outcome of it, continually created and recreated bypeople's ongoing interactions.

Inthe call for papers, we invited diverse perspectives, noting

that research on topics such as organizationalcultures, organi-zational myths, paradigms, shared meanings, special language,and ritualsmay testify to the potential power of cultureas a rootmetaphor for organization studies. Because the concept ofculture in the study of organizations is not well developed, arange of approaches seems not only desirable but required.

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One aim in our selection process, then, was to choose adiversity of perspectives to help illuminate the possibilities ofculture as a root metaphor for organization studies. Inthis, wewere helped immeasurably by the unexpected response to ourinvitation: some 60 papers were submitted for consideration,far more than we had anticipated. But the diversity we hadencouraged made selection that much more difficult. Thepapers presented here seemed to capture the imagination in a

special way, to arouse novel trains of thought, and to enlargeand deepen the meaning of culture as metaphor.

NINEVARIETIESOF CULTURE

The nine papers of the special issue all focus on culture as aninterpretive framework for sense making (by both membersand others) in organizational settings. The initialpaper, Con-cepts of Cultureand OrganizationalAnalysis, by LindaSmir-cich, surveys the roots of the concept of culture inanthropologyand suggests relationships between the concept and organiza-tional analysis. Smircich identifies five research themes thatrepresent intersections of -culture theory and organizationtheory: comparative management, corporate culture, organiza-tional cognition, organizationalsymbolism, and unconsciousprocesses. These themes form the skeleton of her explorationof the power, possibilities, and limits of the concept of culture.As presently used in organizationalanalysis, culture can beeither a variableora metaphor. Smircich argues that the powerand limitations of the culture concept fororganizational analysiscan only be assessed with reference to the particularpurposethe researcher is pursuing. But, whether researchers em-phasize symbolic means of communication; the creation, per-

sistence, and change of meaning structures within organiza-tions; organizations as shared knowledge; or organizations asmanifestations of unconscious mental or social operations, ineach case these approaches direct attention toward the moresubjective aspects of organizations.

In Native-View Paradigms: Multiple Cultures and CultureConflicts inOrganizations, anthropologist Kathleen L.Gregoryoffers a gentle critique of some organization culture literatureand suggests ways to improve it. Natives' views are herfocus; native is used in the special, anthropological sense ofresearch subject. Heraim is to understand the natives intheir

own terms and to understand the varieties of native behavior, inthis case that of functional specialists in Silicon Valleyelec-tronics firms. Making sense of the native views, from theinsider's perspective, ratherthan-imposing external interpreta-tion on them, Gregory shows organizations to be multicultural,ratherthan homogeneous: there are several native viewsdocumented. She emphasizes as well that the meaningscontained in a culture strongly influence individuals'behaviors.Culture is defined as a system of meanings that accompanythe myriadof behaviors and practices recognized as a distinctway of life. Culturalmeanings are apparently shared, fol-lowing Becker (1982), who suggested that people interact asif they shared culture. Both the articulationsof bodies ofmeaning and the categories for grouping respondents weredrawn from the subjects' descriptions. The shared categoriesunderline the importance of functional specialty and, inciden-tally,corroborate the findings of Dearborn and Simon (1958) and

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Introduction

Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), which show the impact offunctional specialization on perception. Gregory recommends'native-view paradigms because they avoid the

management-orientation, ethnocentrism, and structural-functionalist biases of much earlier work.

A Rumpelstiltskin Organization: Metaphors of Metaphors inFieldResearch, by Kenwyn K.Smith and Valerie M. Simmons,

describes a field study of the staff at a psycho-educationalfacility for children. Smith and Simmons also seek to appreciate

tnative views, but at a level of collective symbolizing. Theirstudy portraysthe earlydays of the organization,a time rife withemotionality and conflict. Smith and Simmons tell how thegroup began to use the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin to explaintheir situation. The implicittheme inthis paper is that fairytalessuch as Rumpelstiltskin embody deep and powerful themes -

corresponding to people's experience -that would otherwisebe covert and inaccessible. What elements of these old talesmake them so powerful? Why do leaders fail, and how doestheir failure serve the deeper symbolic and psychological needsof followers? These and many other questions are raised bythisevocative paper.

Semiotics and the Study of Occupational and OrganizationalCultures, by Stephen R. Barley,addresses the meaningsorganization members create, particularly hrough the symbolsor systems of signs they employ. Sign here is to be inter-preted broadly,since signification refers both to the processesby which events, words, behaviors, and objects carry meaningforthe members of a given community and to the content theyconvey. Barleyinvestigated the signs and semantic codes of a

funeral home and the explicit manipulationof

signs byfuneral

directors to create and sustain a particular,normalized meaningfor an untypical event. The maintenance of such meanings inthe face of the unimpeachable reality of death suggests thepower of symbols to engage people ina guided interpretationofreality. Especially in light of widespread interest in culture as anenabling mechanism for organized action, the semiotic ap-proach to culture suggests one form such influence takes.

A Structurationist Account of PoliticalCultures, by PatriciaRiley, describes the symbols used to create the politicalimageof an organization's culture. Using interview data on profes-

sionals intwo different subsidiaries of a parent firm, Rileyseeksto uncover the institutional structures that lie behind politicalthemes concerning signification, legitimation, and domination.

Master structures, the organization's politicalthemes andimages that embody deeper layers of meaning and norms formembers' behavior, are reflected in individuals'descriptions.Structure and symbols are seen as both the medium ofcommunication and the outcome of interaction.

Riley's paper is about power. Inone sense, the concept ofculture seems irrelevantto the argument; certainly the word

culture could almost be excised from the piece without

altering its meaning. But, we see two crucial points of connec-tion. First, power is an important aspect of culture, whereculture is interpreted as the product-and-process of organiza-tion members' sense making through their ongoing inter-actions. Necessarily present interactions are constrained andcolored by prior ommitments. Second, the process by which

333/ASQ,September 1983



the power structure is created -the process of structurationis closely parallelto the process of culturation (as described byBerger and Luckmann, 1967, for instance). Structure is createdthrough images and the symbolic order, which it, inturn,shapes by the processes of signification, domination, andlegitimation. Structures express the commitments of the past,institutionalized in power arrangements, and persist into thepresent by affecting people's behavior. People's behavior, so

structured and constrained, recreates the structures that inturnguide thought. Exactlyso is culture created, and so does itshape the processes of its subsequent recreation. Riley'sapproach underlines the longitudinal,processual natureand themultiple, often incongruent features of organizationalinteractions.

The Uniqueness Paradox inOrganizationalStories, byJoanneMartin,Martha S. Feldman, MaryJo Hatch, and Sim B. Sitkin,discusses organizational culture and organizationalstories andfocuses on the claim that such stories are unique to particularorganizations. The paradox is that organizations claim unique-

ness through culturalmanifestations that are common acrossorganizations. Martin et al. seek to define common elements inorganizationalstories and to understand why this commonalityexists. Seven stories are presented, each of which makes atacit claim to uniqueness, yet each of which occurs widely:Rulebreaking; Isthe big boss human?; Canthe littleperson riseto the top?; WillIget fired?; Willthe organization help me whenI have to move?; How will the boss react to mistakes?; andHow willthe organizationdeal with obstacles? Eachstory posesa question or situation and, through the outcome, communi-cates important organizationalcharacteristics, expectations,

and beliefs. Both the positive versions (implicitlypraisingtheorganization and its members for resourcefulness,egalitarianism, devotion to higher duty, employee support, andthe like)and the negative versions (explainingthe failures of theorganization as derivingfrom certain inbredfaults, like incompe-tent management or lackof support foremployees) of the samestory are to be found.

The core of each story concerns conflict between organiza-tions' needs and members' values: equality versus inequality,security versus insecurity, control versus lack of control. Thestories provide causal explanations and self-enhancing attribu-

tions for success or failureby portraying he organizationand itsemployees as uniquely good or uniquely bad. The underlyingmeaning of the claim to uniqueness may be a fundamentalinterpretive value, like assumptions about rationalityandcontrol.

TransactionCosts, Property Rights, and OrganizationalCul-ture: An Exchange Perspective, by Gareth R.Jones, takes aradicallydifferent perspective on culture, blending economics,anthropology, and organization theory. Here, culture developsas the outcome of negotiation over property rights and theresulting expectations that are created. Norms and values

emerge to actualize rights and enact obligations among organi-zation members, creating a context that determines the valueof what is exchanged and affects the method of enforcement.Itis the external observer's view, as well as the economiccharacter of the model, that we found striking.So muchdiscussion of organization culture rests on an opposite set of




Introduction

highly subjectivist, internalassumptions that Jones' approach,by calling the others into question, offers a provocativealternative.

Efficient Cultures: Exploring he Relationship between Cultureand OrganizationalPerformance, by Alan L. Wilkinsand Wil-liam G. Ouchi, also presents a transaction cost perspective, buttakes a very different tack by arguing that only some sorts of

organizations develop culture. They suggest that inculture-thinorganizations, bureaucratic norms and rules provide the basisfor organized action. They argue that the study of localizedorganizationalculture is more salient for clan settings and lesssalient in bureaucraticor market settings, where alternativeunderstandings mediate transactions, insure long-term equity,and thus encourage efficiency. Wilkinsand Ouchi seem toequate culture with specialized modes of control, rather thanwith the wider symbolic order. This narrow focus stems bothfrom their transaction cost framework and their economic-efficiency priorities. The benefit of such heresy is that it helpsus to question the emerging consensus that culture iseverywhere and always The explanation of choice for under-standing behavior in organizations. The hazard is that hastyacceptance of their notions may legitimate unduly limiteddefinitions of culture.

The final manuscript, Communication to Self in Organizationsand Cultures, by Henri Broms and HenrikGahmberg, offersstill another substantially different way of approaching organi-zations and culture. Culture here is seen as group valuesembedded in shared value-laden images or myths. A centralfocus for Broms and Gahmberg is autocommunication, com-

munication with the self, which produces the symbols andshared images that form culture. Such communication isqualitative, ratherthan additive orquantitative. It s the meaningadded in, the self-cuing aspect of such communication, thatmakes it importantand offers the explanation for some organi-zational communication. The truth or legitimacy of suchcommunication is to be found in the values itexpresses, on themetaphoric level. Strategic planning fills an important symbolicrole in this process. Broms and Gahmberg offer examples ofstrategic plans that functioned in this way. The symbolic idealembodied in the plan provides a pattern around which peoplecan orient, while the concrete details of actual happenings may

readilybe shifted from the planned details to alternates. Whatmatters is the symbolic image -the sense of purpose andprogress, the continued self-cuing. Bycapturingthe element ofbelief crucial to organizationalaction, planningserves as self-communication, to clarifythe organization's image of itself. Theshared view, the creation of a common image, and the impor-tance of planning as cuing for common views and visions is aperspective on planning significantly informed by the culturalmetaphor and culturalprocesses.

THECOMMONALITIESAND DISTINCTIONS

Most of the papers presented here, despite theirvariety, sharea processual view of culture as the continuous recreation ofshared meanings (the two papers on transaction costs see themeanings as more fixed and limited). The linkingof culture andorganization legitimates attention to the subjective, interpretiveaspects of organizationalife, which much traditionalesearch




has sought to overcome by treating them as sources of errorvariance, ratherthan as a valid subject of inquiry.Most of thepapers included here present interpretive, interactive, ratherthan unidirectionallycausal models. Culturepersists and ischanged or maintained by virtue of its continual (re)creationthrough the interactions of organizationmembers, theirsharedinterpretations, and the significations they attach to what

occurs. Culture is intersubjective and simultaneously cause andeffect, for most of these papers. Most focus essentially onculture as a guide for subjective meaning. The two papers ontransaction costs, by Jones and by Wilkinsand Ouchi, portrayculture in more fundamentally economic terms. They provide acrucialconnection, often ignored in organizationtheory oranalysis, between organizations and economic processes. Atthe level of meta-metaphor, the image offered by WilkinsandOuchi and by Jones is that of economic exchange. Wilkins andOuchi and Jones suggest that culture is outcome only, ratherthan both outcome and precondition, as the others assert.

Both these papers are concerned to enforce rules for trans-actions and to manage for efficiency by minimizing transactioncosts. Jones says that culture is the result oroutcome of sharedunderstandings about exchange and value, rights and obliga-tions; Wilkinsand Ouchi say that culture consists of stories,special language, and other important culturalcues, evenwhile itcan be further reduced (forthis paper)to its contributiontoward control relevant to organizationalperformance. Jonesand Wilkinsand Ouchi also seem to disagree on a point centralto Jones' approach: that culture is the set of shared under-standings about property rights, obligations, norms, values,

equity, and exchange rules that makes it possible for a marketto work. To say that there seems to be less unique culture insome organizations than others is to ignore the role of sharedsocial realityand common understandings -in making eco-nomic exchange possible, for instance.

The importance of Martinet al's paper is that itcalls attention toubiquitous tensions ( dualities, in the paper)that pervadeorganizational life. Martinet al. take the valuable step ofrecognizing the uniqueness claim as a fundamental humancharacteristic, a code or key for understanding people in gen-eral, in organizations. While this claim has been describedelsewhere by Simmel and by Howard Fromkin,Martinet al.emphasize its operation in organizations.

This re-emphasis of fundamental human characteristics as anexplanatory foundation for organization theory suggests a linkwith another stream of research, that on group dynamics.Schutz's (1958) FIRO heory posits inclusion, control, andaffection as the core dimensions of interpersonal behavior andsuggests that allgroup activity can be better understood as aplaying out of these themes. Tensions arise around conflictamong the themes, between expressed and desired dimen-

sions of the themes, and around people's different needs andorganizationalagendas. Bion's (1961) approach suggests fight,flight, or bonding as the eternal dynamicto be found inallgroupactions. While the themes are different, the appeal to under-lying human characteristics or needs as the basis for explana-tion of organizationaldynamics is similar.






are the outcomes in terms of organizationalperformance,responsiveness to change, or results. The explanations heresuggest that culture enables organizations to function, but forthe most part no stance is taken on whether that functioning is

good or bad, ineffective or effective -whetherfroma societal, an organizational,or an individualviewpoint. There islittle here to suggest, as much of the popular press coverage on

organizationalculture does, that a strong culture will assist inadaptation to environmental change, for instance (althoughBroms and Gahmberg seem to suggest that a strong culture willguide opportunistic response toward a culturallyacceptablegoal).

The limitations of this collection, and the necessarily tentativeconclusions to be drawn from it, suggest some directions forfurther research. This collection lacks a broad, societal analysisexploring the modern corporation as a culturalform. There is atendency in all of the papers presented here to stress theinternal, rather than to look to the external, societal, cultural

context within which organizations are embedded.The metaphor of culture adds a paradigm to our field's concep-tual tool kit, expanding the old implicitmodels of machines ororganisms to include the newer model of social process. Itisimportant to emphasize that the shift is not just from one nounto another (as from machine to organism) but from noun to verb(from organizationto organizing). What is proposed is a dynamicand interactive model of organizing as a process that persistsand changes over time. Moreover, the nature of the process isconditioned by the nature of the human mind (which seeks tointerpret or make sense) and the nature of the organization as a

human artifact of the sense-making process. Organizations andorganizing, like sophisticated moral reasoning, are simply toocomplex to be well explained by simple dichotomies (likemechanistic versus organic organizations) or by monochromaticcodes of reference.

REFERENCES

Becker, Howard S.1982 Culture: A sociological view.'

Yale Review, 71 (Summer):513-527.

Berger, Peter L., and Thomas

Luckmann1967 The Social Construction of Real-

ity. Garden City, NY:AnchorPress.

Bion, W. R.1961 Experiences in Groups and

Other Papers. London:Tavistock.

Dearborn, DeWitt C., and Herbert A.Simon1958 'Selective perception: A note

on the departmental identifica-tion of executives.

Sociometry, 21: 140-144.

Kohlberg, Lawrence H.1969 Stage and sequence: The

cognitive developmental ap-proach to socialization. InDavid A. Goslin (ed.), Handbookof Socialization Theory and Re-search: 347-480. Chicago:Rand McNally.

Lawrence, Paul R., and Jay W.Lorsch1967 Organization and Environment.

Homewood, IL:RichardD.Irwin.

Perry, William G.1970 Forms of Intellectual and Ethi-

cal Development in the CollegeYears: A Scheme. New York:Holt, Rinehart &Winston.

Pettigrew, Andrew M.1979 On studying organizational

cultures. Administrative Sci-ence Quarterly,24: 570-581.

Schutz, William C.1958 FIRO:A Three Dimensional

Theory of Interpersonal Behav-ior. New York: Rinehart.


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Culture & Org. (Jelineck 1983)