ORGS 2010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Culture Shock, Golden Arches, Edgar Schein
20 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
The cultural perspective on organizations takes issue with a good deal of conventional managerial thought on how to run a business. It is a complex perspective that emphasizes the inherent limitations of managerial authority and influence and rejects claims that strictly structural, rational or interest factors best describe or explain human behavior. Cultural understandings are collectively shaped and rooted in the past and, as a result, are often difficult to surface and articulate because they are so taken- for-granted as natural, obvious, habituated and unquestionable by organizational members. The cultural perspective emphasizes what it is that people must learn to become fully functioning and accepted organizational members. Underlying such an emphasis is an appreciation for the situationally specific character of individual and collective action -- that people take action only on the basis of what a specific situation means to them. The cultural perspective on organizations focuses then on the meanings people assign to their respective work experiences.
