Organizational Culture and Identity

Unity and Division at Work

Martin Parker

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9780761952435, 9780761952428
• eBook ISBN: 9781446233641
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

Organizational Culture and Identity discusses the literature concerned with culture in organizations and explains why the term has been invoked with such enthusiasm. Martin Parker presents further ways of thinking about organizations and culture which suggest that organizational cultures should be seen as `fragmented unities? in which members identify themselves as collective at some times and divided at others.

PART I

Histories and Theories of Organizational Culture

1	Managers in Search of Culture

One might think of corporations as big families. Management acts to develop its people by caring for and training them, setting goals and standards for excellent performance. Every member of the organisation, from the CEO to the lowliest clerk, shares some responsibility for the organisation’s products and services, and the unique patterns with which they carry out their responsibilities distinguish their ‘family’ from those of their competitors. To perpetuate the culture, each employee passes valued traits along to succeeding generations. (Hickman and Silva, 1985: 57-8)

Pride ran deep as the world as I followed the news accounts of the war in the Middle East. Although it had been years since I sat in the cockpit of a military aircraft on active duty, the feeling of kinship came rushing back. It was a conflict that we, as a nation were committed to win. . . There is a lesson in all this which we can use in our business of pizza. (Letter to Pizza Today readers from Gerry Darnell, publisher and editor in chief, quoted in Tlie Guardian 30 April 1991)

Two events in 1979 might allow me to claim that this was the year that modern organizational culturalism was born. A conference was held at the University of Champaign-Urbana that was the first that took this area as its topic (Barley et al., 1988: 24; Pondy et al., 1983). In the same year, Andrew Pettigrew — a British management academic — published an article in Administrative Science Quarterly (usually the home for highly quantitative and conservative management theory) that introduced some cultural language to a large academic audience. Yet these events were of marginal interest compared with the explosion of management guru writing on the topic that rapidly followed. So, this first chapter will explore some of the popular writing that initially stimulated me to think about this topic. I will critically survey a selection of those rather breathlessly enthusiastic works which use the term ‘culture’ to suggest a prescriptive analysis of management in organizations — what I will call ‘culturalism’. Of course, definitions of ‘management gurus’ obviously rely on assumptions about what is ‘academic’ and there is ultimately no satisfactory way to pin down either side of this dualism. Broadly speaking I will be taking an approach that classifies according to my perception of the intended audience. If it seems to me that the audience is primarily ‘practitioners’ it will be dealt with in this chapter, if it is primarily academics it will be dealt with in Chapter 3. Of course crossover of authors does occur but, even then, it seems that the intent of each form of writing is different (Barley et al., 1988). The work of Gareth Morgan can be taken as a case in point here. His early works were clearly intended for an academic readership (Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Morgan et al., 1983; Morgan, 1983) whilst his later writing is more practitioner focused (Morgan, 1986; 1988; 1993). Neither audience is exclusive but I think that both would usually recognize the differences between themselves and the other.

I will look at three books in some detail — Peters and Waterman (1982), Deal and Kennedy (1988) and Ouchi (1981) — since there appears to be something of a consensus that these were central to stimulating the growth of popular managerial interest in organizational culture. The enormous number of other ‘how to’ books that followed means that only a few of the more influential ones will be referenced, but it is safe to say that the majority echo the themes developed in these three texts in a largely derivative way. After rehearsing the main arguments I will then move on to place culturalism within its social context. It seems that the marketizing reforms of the Thatcher and Reagan 1980s combined with the economic and cultural threat of Japan provided fertile ground for a form of description and prescription that privileged entrepreneurial values and elevated managers into heroes. I will conclude by arguing that, though much of this writing is theoretically suspect and politically managerialist, it still begins to put forward a valuable language which can be used to represent organizations and organizing. Rescuing ‘culture’ from managerialism hence becomes one of things I would like to do with the rest of the book.

In Search of Excellence

Some writing which mentioned culture and symbolism in organizations had begun to appear in US management journals and books from the mid 1970s onwards (Silverzweig and Allen, 1976; Peters, 1978; Ouchi and Price, 1978; O’Toole, 1979). However, the wider dissemination of these ideas really began at the end of the decade — initially through the pages of the US business magazines Business Week and Fortune. In 1980 the former printed a piece on ‘excellence’ by Tom Peters which largely outlined the best selling book he was to co-author two years later. A few months after it also printed an influential cover story entitled ‘Corporate Cultures: the Hard-to-Change Values that Spell Success or Failure’. A picture of the stone heads of Easter Island graced the issue and the text added a little introductory anthropology to business practice.

Just as tribal cultures have totems and taboos that dictate how each member will act toward fellow members and outsiders, so does the corporation’s culture influence employees’ actions towards customers, competitors, suppliers and one another. (Business Week, 1980: 148)

The book that followed, Peters and Waterman’s (1982) In Search of Excellence, is probably the most influential management text of recent times and has claims to be the first of a new kind of popular and populist management writing. It had sold over 5 million copies by 1985, been translated into 15 languages and received attention from far outside the normal audience for a book on management and organization. It is subtitled ‘Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies’ and ostensibly contains a study of 43 high performing US corporations — Hewlett-Packard, McDonald’s, Procter and Gamble and so on. However, it is also a story of how the authors found companies in America that behave very much like the celebrated Japanese companies that US business was having to compete with from the late 1970s onwards. The Japanese problem for American business is illustrated with an anecdote about a

Honda worker who, on his way each evening straightens up windshield blades on all the Hondas he passes. He just can’t stand to see a flaw in a Honda! (1982: 37)

Peters and Waterman suggest that this level of employee dedication must also be widely achieved in the US in order for any kind of long term economic and cultural renaissance to take place. Rather fortuitously, they then discover that the best US companies already have it. Their central assertion is that all these ‘excellent’ companies possess certain cultural qualities that ensure their success, and this is illustrated by further anecdotes.

A simple tale comes from Tupperware. . . . The key management task is motivating the more than 80,000 salespeople, and a prime ingredient is ‘Rally’. Every Monday night all the saleswomen attend a Rally for their distributorship. At Rally. everyone marches up on stage — in the reverse order of last week’s sales — during a process known as Count Up (while their peers celebrate them by joining in All Rise). Almost everyone, if she’s done anything at all, receives a pin or badge — or several pins and badges. Then they repeat the entire process with small units marching up . . . . everybody wins; applause and hoopla surround the whole event; and the evaluation technique is informal rather than paper laden. (1982: 123)

The authors argue that the companies that they studied were actually repositories of myths, symbols, stories and legends that reflected and reinforced the central (and positive) values of the organization — caring about customers, being innovatory, focusing on quality and so on. This allowed for less dependence on a bureaucratic rule book because everyone shared a strongly held ‘philosophy’. From this collection of stories the authors distil eight neat maxims for a successful culture and corporation — ‘stick to the knitting’, ‘hands-on, value driven’, ‘productivity through people’ and so on. They oppose these to what they suggest to be the dominant paradigm in US management thought — an emphasis on accountancy, quantification and red tape that stifles the innate creativity of employees beneath a blanket of financial reports and strategic decision trees. As for profit, they approvingly quote one executive who says — ‘Profit is like health. You need it, and the more the better. But it’s not why you exist’ (1982: 103).

Now this may seem like a revolutionary way of thinking about organizations and efficiency but the British management writer John Child suggests that In Search of Excellence actually adds up to no more than a method of organizational design with three key prescriptions for the best method of structuring a company:

1. An emphasis on methods to communicate key values and objectives and to ensure that action is directed towards these. . . .

2. The delegation of identifiable areas of responsibility to relatively small units, including work groups. These units are encouraged to carry out their responsibilities with considerable autonomy and scope for initiative, but they are subject to performance assessments which manifest a preservation of tight central control.

3. Use of a simple lean structure of management which is intended to avoid the rigidities of bureaucracy, the complexities of the matrix and the overheads of both. (1988: 213)

Child is by and large correct in his summary: In Search of Excellence was the latest in a long line of universalistic prescriptions for success that can be traced back to the first management consultant — Frederick Taylor — around the turn of the century.¹ Yet, to suggest that there is nothing new here is to understate the novelty of the package that surrounds these prescriptions. To reduce ‘culturalism’ to maxims about organizational structure is in fact to end up doing exactly what Peters and Waterman are criticizing. Two points are worth emphasizing. Firstly, they are putting forward a radical reconceptualization of management by counterposing the rediscovery of the heroic American manager against what they perceive to be the dominance of the dull ‘organization man’. Peters and Waterman wish managers to be meaning makers with a frontier spirit — passionate believers in the rightness of their cause. As they argue throughout the book, the best of the US and the best of Japan are not that far removed from each other. The manager can be a culture hero — a champion of ‘our’ values. I will return to this idea later in the chapter, but the second important theme that Child neglects is the reconceptualization of organizational practice. Underpinning the idea of manager as culture hero is a strong sense of organizational life as socially constructed and inherently precarious.² Ritual, symbol, myth and culture are terms that suggest a much more textured formulation of organizations than decision science or strategic planning models allow. Though this insight is used in a highly instrumental way it does rely on assumptions about the utility of sociological and anthropological ways of knowing if we are to study organizations differently.

Corporate Cultures

Deal and Kennedy’s Corporate Cultures (1988) draws more explicitly on the anthropological dimensions of culture. Subtitled ‘The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life’ it makes much play with quasi-anthropological terminology throughout — ‘corporate tribes’, ‘symbolic managers’ and so on. The key message of the book is almost identical to that expressed by In Search of Excellence.

Today everyone seems to complain about the decline in American productivity. The examples of industries in trouble are numerous and depressing. Books claim that Japanese management practices are the solution to America’s industrial malaise. But we disagree. We don’t think that the answer is to mimic the Japanese. Nor do we think that the solution lies with the tools of ‘scientific’ management: MBA’s analyses, portfolio theories, cost curves, or econometric models. Instead we think the answer is as American as apple pie. American business needs to return to the original concepts and ideas that made institutions like NCR, General Electric, IBM, Procter and Gamble, 3M, and others great. We need to remember that people make businesses work. And we need to relearn old lessons about how culture ties people together and gives meaning and purpose to their day to day lives. (1988: 4-5)

The book is based on research which echoes Peters and Waterman’s. Of a surveyed 80 companies only 18 had clearly articulated sets of qualitative (non-financial) beliefs and all these were outstandingly successful. The logical inference is questioned in one sentence (1988: 7) and from then on it is accepted that ‘strong’ cultures cause success, ‘weak’ ones failure. As an employer, control the culture successfully and you will have higher productivity with more employee involvement. As an employee, understand your culture and you will be more likely to get ahead in it.

The style of the book is again heavily anecdotal, using stories to illustrate the essential elements of a strong corporate culture. It must have strong core values — exemplified in phrases like DuPont’s ‘Better things for better living through chemistry’ or Dana’s ‘Productivity through people’ (1988: 23). It must have a pantheon of cultural heroes — people who exemplify the values of the corporation through their actions. The rites and rituals of the subtitle again constitute the stuff that holds the company together. Symbolic rewards, myths, ceremonies, unwritten rules of communication and interaction all come together to provide a web of meanings for the employee. In addition Deal and Kennedy present us with typologies of cultural figures and forms — even detailing the favourite dress, housing and sports of the various characters. Rather predictably the book is rounded off with a set of ‘how to’ ideas for diagnosing, managing and changing your own corporate culture. The image that Deal and Kennedy leave us with is one of the manager as benign tribal chief. Anthropological language is used to describe the strange and rather wonderful practices of the corporate employee in order that such knowledge can be deployed in order to shape cultural practice. This is a new science of managing — a softer version than many but a predictive science all the same. Like In Search of Excellence, the book is glossily written, smugly managerialist and, in social scientific terms, not particularly persuasive. However, it is solidly rooted in the idea of organizations as meaning systems and, in this respect at least, it again opens up some intriguing questions about the place of terms like myth, ritual, language and so on within descriptions of organizing.

Theory Z

William Ouchi’s Theory Z (1981) was another bestseller, published the year before Peters and Waterman but now usually seen as an extension of the prescriptions for excellence literature. Yet it is also the most ambitious of the three books and, in some ways, the most academically credible. Its similarity of intent is again clearly flagged in the subtitle — ‘How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge’. The author constructs a typology of three types of firm — American (type A), Japanese (type J) and an American version of the Japanese (type Z). The latter term is borrowed from the later work of the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow (1916), who coined it in a speculative paper to refer to the highest levels of self-actualization (personal satisfaction) that an individual could achieve. In a very interesting paper published a few years before, Ouchi had suggested that Z type organizations could begin to solve the Durkheimian problem of anomie, or normlessness, by providing the security that would ensure an employee’s emotional wellbeing. He suggested that there are parallels with this argument and the work of psychologists like Maslow, who attempted to discover what kinds of organizations can provide the most satisfying work experiences in a (supposedly) increasingly fragmented world (Ouchi and Johnson, 1978: 311).

The book itself relies implicitly upon these earlier ideas but situates itself in more populist terrain. It began as a comparative study of US and Japanese organizations (conducted with Richard Pascale) and became an investigation of certain American companies that, once again, are discovered to perform like Japanese companies. The economic and political agenda for the book rests on Oliver Williamson’s influential transaction-cost ideas about optimizing the relation between organizations and their environments (1975). Williamson suggested that, depending on the nature of the environment, an organization could be structured as either a bureaucracy or a market and that each structure has different advantages and disadvantages. To this typology Ouchi adds the clan structure — which in other papers he suggests is analogous to Durkheim’s organic form of association, Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft and Maine’s status (or noncontractual) form of society (Ouchi and Johnson, (1978: 310; Ouchi, (1980: 132).

Ouchi expresses the logic of each of these three social mechanisms neatly in this extended quote.

In a market each individual is in effect asked to pursue selfish interests. Because the market mechanism will exactly measure the contribution of each person to the common good, each person can be compensated exactly for personal contributions. If one chooses not to contribute anything, then one is not compensated and equity is achieved.

In a clan, each individual is also effectively told to do just what that person wants. In this case, however, the socialization of all to a common goal is so complete and the capacity of the system to measure the subtleties of contributions over the long run is so exact that individuals will naturally seek to do that which is in the common good. Thus the monk, the marine, or the Japanese auto worker who appears to have arrived at such a selfless state is, in fact, achieving selfish ends quite thoroughly. Both of these governance mechanisms realize human potential and maximize human freedom becaus...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Histories and Theories of Organizational Culture
• PART II Three Stories
• PART III Cultures and Identifications
• Appendix: On Methods
• References
• Index