Paradigm lost: Reinvigorating the study of organizational culture

IF 3.1 Q2 MANAGEMENT Research in Organizational Behavior Pub Date : 2016-01-01 DOI:10.1016/j.riob.2016.11.004
Jennifer A. Chatman , Charles A. O’Reilly
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引用次数: 189

Abstract

In spite of the importance of organizational culture, scholarly advances in our understanding of the construct appear to have stagnated. We review the state of culture research and argue that the ongoing academic debates about what culture is and how to study it have resulted in a lack of unity and precision in defining and measuring culture. This ambiguity has constrained progress in both developing a coherent theory of organizational culture and accreting replicable and valid findings. To make progress we argue that future research should focus on conceptualizing and assessing organizational culture as the norms that characterize a group or organization that if widely shared and strongly held, act as a social control system to shape members’ attitudes and behaviors. We further argue that to accomplish this, researchers need to recognize that norms can be parsed into three distinct dimensions: (1) the content or what is deemed important (e.g., teamwork, accountability, innovation), (2) the consensus or how widely shared norms are held across people, and (3) the intensity of feelings about the importance of the norm (e.g., are people willing to sanction others). From this perspective we suggest how future research might be able to clarify some of the current conflicts and confusion that characterize the current state of the field.

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范式丢失:重振组织文化研究
尽管组织文化很重要,但在我们对组织文化的理解方面,学术进展似乎停滞不前。我们回顾了文化研究的现状,并认为正在进行的关于文化是什么以及如何研究它的学术辩论导致了在定义和衡量文化方面缺乏统一性和准确性。这种模糊性限制了发展连贯的组织文化理论和增加可复制和有效的发现的进展。为了取得进展,我们认为未来的研究应侧重于将组织文化概念化和评估为一种规范,这种规范是一个群体或组织的特征,如果被广泛分享和强烈持有,就会作为一种社会控制系统来塑造成员的态度和行为。我们进一步认为,为了实现这一目标,研究人员需要认识到,规范可以被解析为三个不同的维度:(1)内容或被认为重要的内容(例如,团队合作、问责制、创新),(2)共识或在人们之间广泛共享的规范,以及(3)对规范重要性的感受强度(例如,人们是否愿意制裁他人)。从这个角度来看,我们建议未来的研究如何能够澄清当前的一些冲突和混乱,这些冲突和混乱是该领域当前状态的特征。
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来源期刊
Research in Organizational Behavior
Research in Organizational Behavior Psychology-Social Psychology
CiteScore
1.60
自引率
0.00%
发文量
4
期刊介绍: Research in Organizational Behavior publishes commissioned papers only, spanning several levels of analysis, and ranging from studies of individuals to groups to organizations and their environments. The topics encompassed are likewise diverse, covering issues from individual emotion and cognition to social movements and networks. Cutting across this diversity, however, is a rather consistent quality of presentation. Being both thorough and thoughtful, Research in Organizational Behavior is commissioned pieces provide substantial contributions to research on organizations. Many have received rewards for their level of scholarship and many have become classics in the field of organizational research.
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