In this article we integrate three disparate views of culture and cultural change. With each view comes a distinct set of implications about the nature, scope, source(s), and consequences of culture change. Each view also suggests distinct implications for those who wish to manage cultural change in organizations. We argue that to understand how organizations change, in general, it is important to understand these disparate, yet interrelated processes of cultural change. We present these three views of culture and cultural change processes in organizations.

Cultural change: an integration of three different views[1]

In this article, Thomas M. Skrtic analyzes and critiques the special education system in the United States, focusing on its policies, practices, and grounding assumptions. He provides an expansive ...

The Special Education Paradox: Equity as the Way to Excellence

The study of organizational cultures has been dominated by an interpretative approach which has emphasized the production of culture at the expense of the creativity shown by the consumers of cuiture, organizational members. 'Corpor ate culture' is distinguished from 'workplace' or 'organizational' cultures, and a number of other problems emerging within the literature are identified. These are presented as organizational culture versus cultural organization; cultural plurali ties ; rationality and the irrational; common knowledge and its constitution; power and ideology; and individualism and subjectivity. It is then argued, after a detailed discussion of concepts drawn primarily from a close reading of the work of Jacques Derrida, that a postmodern approach to organizational culture would recast the problems in terms of a revised conceptualization of subjectivity, and would formulate culture as paradox, otherness, seduction, and discourse. This would entail studying the 'bricolage' of organizational mem...

On Reading Organizational Culture

This chapter outlines conceptualizations of management reviewing several major empirical studies of managerial work by M. Dalton, J. P. Kotter, and H. Mintzberg. It examines the critical examination of these studies by considering alternative frames of reference for making sense of capitalist work organization. Finally, A. Giddens’ theory of structuration is advanced as providing an alternative methodological framework for the study of managerial work. In his textbook treatment of management, J. Child distinguishes between several different conceptualizations, or images of management. The political aspect of management was equated with the view of management as a ‘system of power and authority within which different personal and group strategies are pursued’. In the process of acting, agents are conceived by Giddens as mobilizing interpretative schemes, norms and other facilities which, collectively, are described as the modalities of structuration. The interaction between R. K. Brown and the steward illustrates how a system of legitimation supports the normative regulation of interaction.

Studying managerial work: a critique and a proposal[1]

The article draws attention to the anomaly that alternative approaches to assessment are not more evident in critical pedagogies. Using critical versions of management education as an illustration, the authors point out that there is little examination of the assessment procedure, let alone any replacement of it by less hierarchical methods. Drawing on students' experiences of participative assessment, the authors also illustrate some of the social processes involved and question the implicit assumption that such practices necessarily bring about equality. Differences within student groups influence power relations, which in turn are likely to affect the process of assessment and its outcome. While supporting the aims of participative assessment, particularly as an element of critical pedagogy, the article emphasises the need to take account of the complexities involved and ends with a discussion of implications for the role of tutors.

Assessment: A critical perspective

ed/simplified beyond sustainable limits. Their suggestion that Sheila's husband should consider obtaining a job in Central Town, simply to accommodate theii own plans for reorganizing North Midlands Board, is received with incredulity. In communicating this simjdification the management domination myth is threatened with 'exposure', because it contradicts an even more pervasive domination myth in 'western' societies, that of the sovereignty of the husband as 'primordial breadwinner' in the structure tit the family.̂ '' The seriousness tii the suggestion that Sheila's husband should ccmtemplate a job in Central Town and give up his present job to enable Sheila to move to Central Distria is confirmed in the 'taking seriously' of the engineers. The management domination myth was in faa subsequently rescued from complete 'exposure' by the introduction of humour. The engineers enacted an 'action replay' in which che roles played were exaggerated and the issue was diffused in hilarity. Nevertheless, the episode became part of folk-lore and remained as a potential threat, which illustrates the need for continual reinforcement of myth. One way in which the rules underlying myth are reinforced, thus underlining the belief in the rules, is by the development of rituals. The relationship between myth and ritual is obviously reflexive, and therefore, rituals develop from the formation of myth and concurrently support myth-maintenance. The manipulation oi rituals in order to maintain the 'principle of control' and hence the existing structure of domination is a further feature of the relationship between myth and ritual. Cohen in fact has suggested that continual attention is required in order to perpetuate such myths: 'All the intellect, skill, and cunning of the ideologist, the poliddan, the theologian, and the artist and all the techniques of colour, music, poetry and drama are needed to create, accomplish and perpetuate the myth of authority in the face of continually subversive processes of different sorts.'" The development of secrecy rituals, (for example, at Wenslow Manufacturing Co. only certain things are allowed to be discussed or decided upon by certain levels of hieraidiy and these have become institutionalized) is a potent source of defence against such forces, whereby those in control legitimate the right to aa (oontrol) in secrecy and the ritual feeds the myth. Thus the subversive processes are stemmed by the very defining of them as subversive. They are defined in this 6cheme as threatening die secrecy which is so

Establishing blissful clarity in organizational life: managers

Symbolism, sovereignty and domination in an industrial hierarchical organisation

This study examines Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) as a global assemblage that instrumentalizes colonial governmentality. CAIE is a department of the University of Cambridge that has governed schools in British colonies and former colonies since the mid-19th century. These schools constitute a Cambridge School system with approximately 1 million students around the world who take Cambridge examinations. CAIE invisibilizes its thousands of schools in the global South by enclosing them within privatized discursive spaces it terms “Cambridge School Communities.” CAIE simultaneously assembles and visibilizes an ecology of expertise by connecting a global array of researchers, consultants, businesses, organizations, publication outlets, and conferences. Rather than taking an interest in the “low-performing jurisdictions” of Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, CAIE’s ecology of expertise positions British educational culture in relation to a pre-modern “East.” CAIE explains the East’s high performance in international comparative assessments with stereotypes in order to reassert the superiority of British-led international education. These technologies of colonial governmentality altogether enable CAIE’s global extraction of epistemic authority.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14749041221125027

David Golding

Papers

Establishing blissful clarity in organizational life: managers

Symbolism, sovereignty and domination in an industrial hierarchical organisation

The colonial governmentality of Cambridge Assessment International Education