Schein. (1996). Culture: The Missing Concept in Organization Studies. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(2), 229–240. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393715
Summary
An emphasis on the individual has led organizational studies to underestimate the power of culture. The importance of multidisciplinarity is emphasized, especially with regards to ethnographic and field research methods. Along with the focus on individuality, organizational studies have become too reliant on abstractions (i.e., survey response), which allow for statistical manipulation. These “fuzzy” theories are “often useless to the practitioner.” Theoretical concepts should be generated through: (1) “concrete observations of real behavior in real organizations”, (2) these observations should hang together and “make sense”, (3) the concepts need to be formally and operationally defined, and (4) they need to be tied to the current concerns of practitioners.
Culture is “taken-for-granted, shared tacit ways of perceiving, thinking, and reacting.” The author gives the example of how understanding the psychological changes that happened to POWs in the Korean War required not just a focus on the individual, but “the entire milieu the captor was able to create.” Manipulated information (such as forged documents) were presented to prisoners, and incentives were manipulated to bring about “sincere” confessions, groups were manipulated (e.g., removing leaders, “tying the fate of a group cell to the progress of its most resistant member”). Of special relevance was the seemingly complete and wholehearted sincerity of the captor’s conviction in Communism.
Application
Innovations frequently start at the bottom level of organizations (the “operator” level), but they fail to diffuse upwards. This is because “engineers” are often looking for technical, rather than human, solutions. Additionally, “executives” are unwilling to adopt a change unless its ability to produce financial returns can be demonstrated.
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