Cultural Approach to Organizations

Meet the pioneers behind this theory:

Michael Pacanowsky
"Culture is not a piece of the puzzle; it is the puzzle"

Clifford Geertz
"Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun"


MAIN IDEAS

• Organizations have their own culture
• Organizations have a particular culture where the meaning of things are shared between individuals
• Corporate culture is formed through image, character and climate
• The cultural approach takes a humanistic look at organizations/work places
• A switch from a “systems” based approach, to a “cultural” approach metaphor of organizations

Geertz and Pacanowsky describe organizations as having their own culture.  This means that any given organization has a particular culture in which the meanings for things are shared between individuals.  This symbolic interactionist approach is influenced by the East, and Japanese companies that have moved into the West.  

Corporate culture – the environment that surrounds each company and consists of the organization’s image, character and climate.

Corporate culture means different things depending on who you ask. Some use the term to describe the environment that limits a companies freedom of action.

Others look at it as image, character, or work environment. 

What culture is; what culture is not

ØGeertz admits that the concept of culture as “Systems of Shared Meaning” as somewhat vague and is difficult to grasp. He and his colleagues do not distinguish between high and low culture. The elusive nature of culture prompts Geertz to label its study as a “Soft Science”

ØCulture is not whole or undivided. Geertz points out that even close knit societies have subcultures within their boundaries.

What Etnographers Do

Ethnography – discovering who people within a culture think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end do they think that they are doing it.

Most Ethnographers realize that their task is to:

• •Accurately describe talk and actions, and the context in which they occur
  
  
  •Capture the thoughts, emotions, or purpose to what people say and do
  
  
  •Assign motivation, intention, or purpose to what people say and do
  
  
  •Artfully write this up so readers feel they’ve experienced the events
  
  
  •Interpret what happened: Explain what it means within this culture

The Symbolic Interpretation of a Story

Stories provide windows into organizational culture. Pacanowsky suggests three types of narrative that dramatize organizational life.

1. Corporate stories- carry the ideology of management and reinforce company policy

2. Personal stories- those that the company personnel tell about themselves, often defining how they would like to be seen in an organization
3.  Collegial stories- positive and negative anecdotes told about others in the organization

—Rituals – texts that articulate multiple aspects of cultural life, often marking rites of passage or life transitions

—Rites of passage are used to facilitate transitions of persons into social roles and statuses that are new for them

Here's a video which would sum up all there is to know about this theory:

I hope that this blog post will be of good help to some of the viewers! :)
#COMMTHEORYISFUN
#COMMUNICATIONTHEORY
#CULTURALAPPROACHTOORGANIZATIONS

The author of this blog post is Angel Diane L. Tadifa, who is currently a 2nd yr Mass Communication student at Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU).