Practical info

• Text on Bourdieu and Giddens by Nicolini (2012) is on GUL

• Next week:– Reading workshop 4– Testing workshop:

• Questions on theory• Open books• Preparation: think about a ”lexicon” for each perspective

– Self-leadership session with Career service

Cultural perspectives in management studies

Elena RaviolaLecture 6

Cultural perspectives

• From culture – a property– Something that organizations have

• To culture – to be– Something organizations are

Looking at different phenomena in organizations with a cultural perspective

Roots in ethnomethodology

• Reaction to reification of traditional sociology

• Ethno + method + logy

• Definition: ”It is the study of methods by which members (socially functioning human beings) make sense out of their world. …a view of social action where the emphasis is on the organization of perception which results in action becoming meaningful.” (Attewell, 1974: 192)

In the words of Garfinkel (1967: vii-viii)

“Their study is directed to the tasks of learning how members' actual, ordinary activities consist of methods to make practical actions, practical circumstances, common sense knowledge of social structures, and practical sociological

reasoning analysable.”

Key words in ethnomethodology

• Interactions • Meanings• Language

Sensemaking

• Sense + making • 7 characteristics (Weick, 1995):– Related to identity– Retrospective– Enacted– Social– Ongoing– Relies on cues– Plausible

Sensemaking

Sensemaking involves the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize

what people are doing.(Weick et al., 2005: 409)

I could have asked, “Why did they decide to shoot?” However, such a framing puts us squarely

on a path that leads straight back to the individual decision maker, away from potentially powerful contextual features and right back into

the jaws of the fundamental attribution error. “Why did they decide to shoot?” quickly becomes “Why did they make the wrong decision?” Hence, the attribution falls squarely onto the shoulders

of the decision maker and away from potent situation factors that influence action.

Framing the individual-level puzzle as a question of meaning rather than deciding shifts the emphasis away

from individual decision makers toward a point somewhere “out there” where context and individual

action overlap Such a reframing—from decision making to sensemaking—opened my eyes to the

possibility that, given the circumstances, even I could have made the same “dumb mistake.” This disturbing

revelation, one that I was in no way looking for, underscores the importance of initially framing such

senseless tragedies as “good people struggling to make sense,” rather than as “bad ones making poor decisions”.

From Weick et al. (2005: 410)

The narrative perspective• Stories are the way we make sense of the world

• Stories = events with a plot

• Stories have morals

• Organizing is about storytelling– In different way– At different levels

• Studying organizing is about collecting these stories• Important authors: Barbara Czarniawska, David Boje

TOWARDS THEORIZING ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND CHANGE

The culture buzz

• Research roots: ethnomethodology, narratives, sensemaking

• …but the real buzz came when Peters and Waterman wrote in 1982

Three broad views on organizational culture and change (Meyerson and Martin, …)

• Integration

• Differentiation

• Ambiguity

Integration

• Culture is consistency• Change = unfreezing+change+refreezing

(Lewin)

Organizational culture: Schein’s definition

“The patter of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered valid, and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to these problems” (Schein, 1985:9)

Culture according to Schein (1985)

• Artifacts• Values • Assumptions

Differentiation

• Subcultures• Change = differences in different subcultures

Ambiguity

• Variation and unclarity in organizations• Change = different interpretations by different

people and groups