In this lecture, I am going to discuss [UNKNOWN] text engineering culture. Now before all you ask of me, let me tell you at the outset that I don't know which particular technology firm this stay is about and I don't know if it really matters the point is that we have this recognizable Form of organization culture and it's a case of a, of a high-tech company that seems to influence control and commitment of it's members to the corporation. Now Kunda approaches organizational culture in many of the same ways as does Martin and [UNKNOWN] In difference though, his primary focus is on the interactions, the actual rituals that people perform within the organization, how they talk about it, how they present themselves. And his primary tool is that of ethnographic observation. In his book, Kunda studies the context of normative transactions, and by that I mean, managerial conceptions of the culture. here, organizational culture is an ideology. Kunda focuses on how it's enacted, the rituals by which this ideology is adapted and instilled. And he looks at how the members respond to this, how they negotiate The need for distance and embracement of this culture and its rituals. Kunda regards organizational culture, as a means to normative control and by that I mean it's a means of controlling the hearts and minds of employees. The management in these firms are seen as defining the organizational identity. For the members the company, the perspective on the culture is, is familiar. It's systematic, comprehensive, thought out, well-articulated, and associated with the company's interest. This kind of depiction of organizational culture as an ideology is consistent with anthropological conceptions of ideology. Such as that of Clifford Geertz where all ideologies are schematic images of social order that's publicly offered in the name of those with a claim to authority. As maps of problematic social reality and matrices for the creation of collective conscience. So what authority gets across in an organization culture? Who is [UNKNOWN] of social orders offered and practiced? The inscription of the organization identity falls into different categories, each of which diff, derives authority from a different source. First, there's managerial authority, which derives it's authority and influence from the documented views of senior managers, the company philosophy, taped speeches of the CEO, company mission statements. All of those are kind of framed in terms of morals and ideals. A second form of authority. Is expert authority. And this type of authority emanates from technical papers, reports and memos that internal experts write. The third kind of authority, comes from objective authority. And this type of authority comes from selective representations of materials that are produced by outside observers of the tech, of tech, right? Such as news clippings, TV ads, and so forth. All of these kinds of authority combine to offer a company perspective and ideology. The company selects what to represent of this material and their influence is additive and compounding. It's somewhat integrative. In terms of how they portray the organizational culture at tech. Let's look at each of these authorities on the organizational culture one at a time. First let's look at the senior management view about tech culture. The senior management kind of focuses primarily on the attributes of the collective of the firm at the collective level and, it affords these accounts that lend the members some kind of sense of moral significance. The management does this through all kinds of speeches, interviews, editorials and all of them give a kind of personalized, animated view of the company ideology. And they flesh it out in more kind of, common sense testimonial ways. Through these kind of testaments they build a we sense, by referencing the past, the mission shared values, and identities we all have. In this way the membership and the community is presumed to kind of define your social existence and your personal experience. You don't just assume a role, you incorporate it and become it. It becomes part of your virtual self. The image here is that there really is no conflict between the individual and the company. There is an integrated paradigm, the organization claims to give employees a place to grow and develop a moral order that they can participate in, and this moral order, personally meaningful and is derived from participating in the company. A good place you can kind of see elements of this is in the company documents on goals emissions. There you see all kinds of catchphrases and abstract ideals mom and, mom and apple pie kind of stuff, right? They entail things no one would really disagree with, and only things you would want to emulate. So, for example, they'll characterize their members as creative, hard working, good people, out for the common good. For example, here is the Levi's jeans mission statement again you saw earlier in the course. And as you can see, it's related in a moral and normative fashion with mentions of a strong relationship with customers. Mentions of trust, product quality, and universality, right. So what's not to like? Second, we have internal experts who focus more on the requirements and attributes of the member's role. So whereas managers focus on the collective as a whole, here we have experts who focus on member roles. As insiders these experts give an aura of independence, practicality, and scientific credibility. They, they aren't you know, people who've drank the Kool-Aid, so to say. A good example of such an expert view in identity portrayal can be seen in the native anthropologist. Who is studying the organizational culture here. Her name is Ellen Cohen in the case. Her register of speech is often open, pragmatic and critical. She's seemingly balanced in her portrayal of self. Her moral tone is, is not evident, and the ideological facade is acknowledged somewhat in her presentations. This view is consistent with the managerial perspective, but it's less ideal and more real seeming The expert even acknowledges downsides and her prescriptions are pragmatic. Her rural performance is more based on personal success and self help. So the expert is, is still reviewed as, as partisan, though in spite of these accounts. She's not giving a critical account that's resistance or counter to the company firm but it's actually more reinforcing from a slightly different angle that seems to complement the managerial views and form a layer on top of the managerial authority. That reinforces kind of an integrated perspective on the company culture. A third view comes from outside the firm. From academics, consultants, and journalists. It's kind of an objective authority that the firm brings in to reinforce and integrate a culture. Organizations typically tend to decide which of these perspectives to relate and share, and they're mostly positive. The accounts tend to be edited. Selective reviews of the company from outside that reinforce the culture further. So popular books tend to get closer to the manager's ideal but from an external basis. Academic pieces seem to offer an objective view that the company's members are orientated toward the firm and its culture, right. And journalism is most widely kind of used and people take clippings that are posted, often kind of focusing on the CEO, kind of giving this heroic imagey, imagery of the firm. So, many similar themes are addressed here, but you see negative critical pieces aren't being really tremendously shown. So all three of these views kind of compound to form one integrated view of tech. And membership in tech Entails heavy involvements, strong bonding to the company, lots of zeal. And this leads to the collapse and the boundary between self and the organization. It becomes a cult and this accomplishment is seen as leading to kind of economic success. And it's accomplished by designing an environment based on individual autonoby, autonomy. Informality and minimal status distinction and seeming disorganization but in reality, it leads to this heightened commitment and process of seeing one's work as a means to self-fulfillment and identity formation and performance. So the firm at Tech has successfully implemented this integrated culture and the rest of Kumru's piece starts to focus on well what does this do to your sense of self and how you cope in an organization with a strong organizational culture. So tech has this pretty strong organizational culture and the question then becomes how did they constructed and then the company culture and ideology is actually enacted and instilled in its members via presentation rituals of their organizational self. And these presentation rituals occur everywhere In the members everyday lives at that firm. And, the performance of such rituals Is really kind of a framing device. And by that I mean, members act as agents Of the corporate interest. They attempt to establish a shared definition of the Situation. Within which reality claims derive from the organizational identity are experienced as valid. These rituals are used as vehicles for the exertion of symbolic power, and that defines reality. So I know that may seem like a lot of jargon to some of you. But mow it over for a bit. What I mean here is that every time a tech employee or manager does a presentation or interacts in a meeting, they act as an employee, not as a father or a mother. And they act as an agent of the firm. Even people in the audience that listen and play their rule complement to that expect professional behavior and a style of interaction that makes the everyday reality of living intact seem different from everywhere else. And seemingly valid and natural to them as a means to expressing an identity. If we look at tech we can see presentation rituals everywhere. If you recall, Martin Meyerson's focus was on cultural elements. And if we take that, we'll start to see many of the same elements within Kunda's case. For example, ritual presentations of self are most often observed in person's behavioral displays. Many organizations these are time bound interactions that are specific to a particular audience and setting. And these interactions we see people present and attempt to establish positive definitions of their self. They wrangle and maneuver so as to do a good job to come off in certain ways we see these displays most frequently in presentations question and answer sessions and meetings. Notably all of these are decision arenas that you heard about earlier in the course. A lot of these contexts are also mundane they can be private every day kind of places like the chatter we have at lunch, in our back offices or at the water cooler. They don't necessarily have to be formal meetings. [INAUDIBLE] Presentation rituals also occur in artifactual displays, like when we walk by workspaces or observe someone's dress. These are standing exhibits of a self meant for passerbys and bystanders. A tech. These exhibits are found at their desks where they display personal mementos, tech stuff and humorous jokes about the company. One can even see a particular artifactual display here at Stanford if... I walked down the hallway of the law school where the computer science departments. I see very different organizational cultures as terms of the exhibits on display. At the law school, their offices resember, resemble a lawyer's office with cherry wood, L shaped desks, neat shelves And so on. In addition, all the faculty dress relatively formal in comparison to the rest of campus. By contrast, if I walk down the hallway of the computer science department, the faculty offices are casual. Toys and equipment are strewn about. The professors kind of dress in t-shirts, sneakers, or flip flops. There's a very different notion of organizational self that exists in these tow parts of campuses, and one can readily infer it from merely walking by and observing these standing exhibits. As an analyst, we can capture and record behavioral and artifactual displays in a variety of ways. Through interviews we get personal accounts of self, through observation and recording we get a record of talk, interpersonal behavior and exhibits, and through active note taking and involvement we can even form understandings of these encounters as if we are participants. As opposed to foreigners, right. All of these devices help us compile evidence on how ritual interactions shape the workers organizational self and form this organizational culture. Upon observing many such interpersonal rituals and speaking with Tech employees, Kunda comes to observe a persistent pattern or style to their interactions. The tech rituals that are every day kind of interactions have at least two features. First, they're characterized by a decentralization of power. The every day rituals have kind of a shifting environment of different speakers, reputations. Projects, teams and so on. And these seem to entail many different speakers changing projects and shifting reputations. So power isn't very centralized in their everyday affairs. Second tech ideology is one of openness, informality, individual initiative and real feelings, right? Hence the symbolic power being exerted on the employees is really subtle. It's revealed in brief episodes of social drama like, when you have question and answer sessions and talk. Where or in talks, where some individual will seem to establish authority. If you recall, that can be in several forms. Formats like a managerial expert or external kind of authority, right. Upon observing many of these that are personal rituals and speaking with the Tech employees, Kunda comes to observe a persistent pattern or style of interaction that exists at Tech. And the Tech rituals have at least two features that occur across contexts. First Their rituals are characterized by a decentralization of power. It's not in the authority of the role or position that you see power. It's actually in everyday rituals where people are interacting on meetings, on projects and teams. And these interpersonal rituals seem to rotate who speaks, and who's in charge, and who has a higher or better or worse reputation. So power isn't very centralized in these everyday affairs. Second, tech ideology is presented as one of openness and formality, individual initiative and real feelings. Hence, the symbolic power of Tech is being exerted rather subtly. It's revealed in these little social dramas of question and answer sessions and talks where some individuals seem to do better than others. It's in these mini dramas of control. That we see this kind of effort of establishing company norms and ideologies, right? And, the, the rituals have a, and the dramas have a kind of particular structure where there's a challenge, this rising tension and then actors acting on the corporate interest use very tech, various techniques suppress and redefine a descent Silence the deviants, and gain support. Right? So if someone doesn't follow norms of presentation of what kind of self is, is expected or desired we have these micro rituals in meetings, talks and presentations, where there's these minor disagreements and gaffs. And people come to exert norms of behavior and guide presentations of self so that they reflect and reinforce this tech culture and its notion of decentralized power and informal kind of informality, right? So, it's through this that everybody starts to exert this kind of sense of self. And organizational culture. It's distributed and it's informally presented and practiced through a myriad of, of minor dramas.
