On Reading Lines in Shifting Sands: making organisational culture relevant
Abstract
Despite the ubiquity of the term ‘organisational culture’ in both popular and scholarly management literature, it remains an ambiguous concept, whose practical application is recognised as being far from universally successful.
This dissertation, instead of focussing on culture as some sort of objective or unchanging attribute of an organisation, treats it as a phenomenon emerging from social interaction and individual sense-making. It draws on, and extends, George Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology.
This framework is applied to a business school attached to a large university, which is first absorbed into its Commerce Faculty, and then dissolved into a new Department, as the overall university structure is modified. Grounded Theory methodology is used to develop an approach to the description of the cultural interaction and changes that occur, and to generate theory that partially explains how and why they do. Implications are explored for the management of organisations undergoing change, particularly where this involves merging or restructuring organisational units, and for the training and development of managers to be involved in such activities. ...