Cultural Complexity in Organizations [antikvár]

Introduction Sonja A. Sackmann The concept of culture as it applies to organizations has gone through various stages since its rediscovery in the early 1980s. The initial phase of infatuation was followed by disenchantment. Many organizational scholars and practitioners wrote and talked about the importance of culture for an enhanced understanding of organizational life and about its relevance for organizational performance. Little rigor and less consensus, however, existed regarding the use of the term culture (Sackmann, 1991, pp. 7-32). The few empirical studies that were performed were too spotty to contribute to a better understanding, and culture change programs seemed more likely to produce frustration than to improve corporate performance. This picture has changed. Interest in the concept of culture has become more serious and more differentiated. Attempts have been made toward more rigorous conceptualizations both of the concept (Sackmann, 1991) and of the field (Frost, Moore, Reis Louis, Lundberg, & Martin, 1991; Martin, 1992; Sackmann & Phillips, 1992). Research on the failure of reengineering projects has revealed that cultural issues deserve more serious attention and attention of a different kind (Scott-Morgan, 1994). Most of the conceptualizations of, as well as the research on, culture, however, give a "cleaner" or more rational picture than the nature of the concept and its manifestations in organizational life may deserve. For example, as Frost et al.