Schein 1990 offered a more concise, peer-reviewed version of the arguments put forth in Schein 1985. Importantly, Schein stressed the role of the leader as the creator and maintainer of culture within organizations. Subsequently, Schein 1985, a foundational volume, discusses an organization’s culture as the basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared consistently across members of an organization and define taken-for-granted views of the organization and its environment. Deal and Kennedy 1982 studied culture as the manner in which things “get done” in an organization, offering a model of culture based on four organizational prototypes.
The following year, Hofstede 2001 raised questions around the applicability of American management theory abroad and studied those cultural differences that interface with and influence organizational cultural characteristics. Finally, disciplinary influences and emerging approaches are discussed.Īndrew Pettigrew is widely credited with introducing the concept of organizational culture to the field with his 1979 article “On Studying Organizational Cultures.” Pettigrew 1979 offered insights on concepts and processes associated with organizational culture, which he equated with the birth of organizations he described culture as an amalgam of beliefs, identity, ritual, and myth-a conceptualization still widely used today. Then, methodological approaches are reviewed, investigating culture and related concepts.
Next, major paradigmatic approaches are reviewed, and the roles of culture in organizational life, as independent variable, dependent variable, and moderator, are discussed. The first sections provide an introduction to organizational culture, including introductory works, early contributions, overviews, and textbooks. The readings here reflect this diversity in theoretical and methodological approaches and are organized as follows.
As a result, researchers in management and organization have taken a range of approaches to understanding organizational culture, from exploring the forces that may create and change culture, to studying it as a driver of performance and effectiveness, to linking it with identity and employee personality. Methodologically, studies have employed both qualitative and quantitative methods, each of which has yielded unique insights on some aspects of culture. For example, while some scholars have studied culture from a functionalist standpoint, focusing on normative forces promoting homogeneity and uniformity, others have approached it from an interpretive paradigm, emphasizing the meanings that social actions have for individuals in organizations. As such, theoretical paradigms and research methods used for inquiry in this area have been diverse. Although early studies of organizational culture generally portrayed it as consistent among employees, across levels and between departments, subsequent work spoke to the possibility of heterogeneous manifestations of culture within a single organization, suggesting that the creation and maintenance of a desired organizational culture may be more complex and nuanced than initially understood. As such, understanding organizational culture has traditionally been seen as an avenue for equipping business leaders with the tools needed to enable effective performance through the creation and management of an appropriate culture. Researchers suggested that organizational culture could significantly affect organizational outcomes, reasoning that culture could be used as a resource to affect employee actions, distinguish firms from one another, and create competitive advantage for those with superior cultures. Building on insights from sociology and anthropology, organizational scholars argued that organizations could possess distinct cultures, or sets of shared values, beliefs, and norms that guide the attitudes and actions of organizational members. The concept of organizational culture was introduced to the field of management and organization studies in the late 1970s, and it began to attract significant scholarly attention in the early to mid-1980s.