Lecture 7th of December

Group Communication

Cultural Approach to Organizations (Clifford Geertz and Michael Pacanowsky)

 Culture as a Metaphor of Organizational life
 What culture is; what culture is not
 Three assumptions of organizational cultural theory
 Thick Description - What Ethnographers do
 Metaphors: taking languages seriously
 The symbolic interpretation of story
 Ritual: This is the way it`s always been and always will be
 Can the Manager be an agent of cultural change?
 Critique: Is the cultural approach useful?

Cultural Approach to organizations

 Geertz: “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun”
 Pacanowsky applied Geertz` cultural insights to organizational life

Culture as a metaphor of organizational life

 Organizations look radically different depending on how people in the host culture structure
meaning
 Term corporate culture means different things to different people
 Surrounding environment that constrains a company`s freedom of action
 Image, character, or climate
 “the essence of organizational life” (West and Turner, 2010, p.277)

What culture is, what culture is not

 Culture - webs of significance, systems of shared meaning
 Cultural performance - actions by which members constitute and reveal their culture to
themselves and other
 Geertz labeled its study as soft science
 Corporate observer: one part scientist, one part drama critic

Three assumptions of organizational cultural theory

According to Pacanowsky and O`Donell-Trujillo (1982):
1. Organizational members create and maintain a shared sense of organizational reality, resulting in a
better understanding of the values of an organization.
 Values are the standards and principles within a culture that have intrinsic worth to a
culture.
2. The use and interpretation of symbols are critical to an organization’s culture.
3. Cultures vary across organizations, and the interpretations of actions within these cultures are
diverse.
Thick Description - What Ethnographers do
 Ethnography - mapping social discourse; discovering who people within a culture think they are,
what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it
 Thick description - a record of interviewed layers of common meaning that underlie
what a particular people say and so.

 Pacanowsky would pay attention to all cultural performances but particularly to the imaginative
language members used, the stories they told, and the nonverbal rites and rituals they practiced
 Forms of communication provide helpful access to unique shared meaning within an
organization

 Most ethnographers:
1. Accurately describe talk, actions, and context
2. Capture thoughts, emotions, and interactions
3. Assign motivation, intention, or purpose
4. Artfully write it up
5. Interpret what happened

 Metaphor - clarifies what is unknown or confusing by equating it with an image that is more
familiar or vivid
 Metaphors offer ethnographers a starting place for accessing shared meaning of a
corporate culture

The symbolic interpretation of story

 Stories told over and over provide convenient window to view corporate webs of significance
 Three kinds of stories
 Corporate stories - tales that carry management ideology and reinforce company
policy
 Personal stories - tales told by employees that put them in a favorable light
 Collegial stories - positive or negative anecdotes about others in the organization;
description of how things really work

Ritual: this is the way it`s always been and always will be
 Ritual - texts that articulate multiple aspects of cultural life, often marking rites of passage or life
transition
 Organizational rites at more traditional companies weave together many threads of
the corporate culture
Can the manager be an agent of cultural change?
 The possibility of changing culture becomes a seductive idea
 Shared meanings are hard to dispel
 Symbol watchers within a company discount words of management if they don`t
square with performance
 Should culture be changed?

Critique: is the cultural approach useful?

 Geertz would regard the quest to alter culture as inappropriate and virtually impossible
 Corporate consultants want to understand organizational communication and
influence it
Consider this…
At the heart of Organizational Culture Theory is the belief that organizations have various symbols,
rituals, and values that make them unique. Please consider whether or not an organization could have
symbols, rituals, and values that could serve to damage the culture of the organization. Be sure to
provide specific examples of your thinking and what the potential consequence would be to an
organization’s culture. (West & Turner, 2010)