Difference within organizational culture.
Item
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Title
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Difference within organizational culture.
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Identifier
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AAI9618083
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identifier
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9618083
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Creator
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Markus, Keith.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joel Lefkowitz
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Date
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1996
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Industrial | Anthropology, Cultural | Language, Linguistics
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Abstract
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People could not perform the day-to-day activities which go on in organizations without shared understandings of those activities. Still less could those activities be carried out efficiently without a groundwork of shared meanings which literally go without saying. It is not surprising, then, that shared meanings (valuations, expectations, interpretations, and such) play a central role in organizational culture research.;This emphasis on shared meanings conceals difference. Even culture change is portrayed as a step from one stepping stone to another, to another fixed and unified location in culture-space. The recent re-emphasis on subcultures within organizations begins to address this problem. Even here, however, (sub)culture is theorized as a fixed and total meaning-system.;Difference within organizational culture is further concealed by the implicit theory of meaning articulated in writings on organizational culture. The meanings which become incorporated into an organization's culture are described as having been at one time (if not still) conscious interpretations. Objects, practices and events are endowed with meaning from the consciousness which comprehends them, and that meaning is then expressed through signifying activity (language, ritual, etc.). Such an approach hides from view the unthought meanings which reside in the pattern of the signifying activity, and are reproduced through it without conscious intention.;This study brings difference within organizational culture into view. To do so, the data collection strategy is shifted from the traditional reliance on organization members' conscious understandings of their culture, which are already systematized constructions of individual subjects, toward analysis of the language they use to talk about their organization. Audio recordings were made at focus groups in which employees discussed aspects of their organization related to its culture.;Five forms of difference within organizational culture are derived from previous research. Text analysis of the transcripts both instantiates the anticipated forms of difference within, and advances their conceptual clarity. The analyses support the notion that organizational culture cannot be adequately understood without reference to difference within.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
