THE INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: STRATEGIES FOR ACTION IN HIGHLY‐ORDERED CONTEXTS*
批判了管理文献中三种文化概念对个体能动性的低估，提出一个关注个体如何在高度有序文化中既遵循又偏离规则的框架，并通过对一家财富500强公司会议的分析，揭示了文化对冲突的压制以及个体挑战文化规则的能力。
ABSTRACT Writers in the management literature use one of three general concepts of culture: homogeneous organizational culture, heterogeneous subgroup cultures, and ambiguous cultures. In spite of their differences, each of these conceptualizations focuses attention primarily on the context in which the individual member of an organization acts, and suggests that the latitude for individual action increases as the orderliness of that context decreases. In doing so, the culture literature has underestimated the role of individual actors as active agents in their contexts, regardless of the degree of orderliness prevailing in them. By incorporating a more dynamic perspective of action into the cultural analysis of organizations, this article develops a framework which focuses attention on how individuals not only adhere to, but also depart from even highly‐ordered organizational and subgroup cultures. This framework is then used to investigate managerial interactions during a planning meeting in HAPCO (a pseudonym), a Fortune 500 company. Two general conclusions emerge from these analyses. First, the normative force of HAPCO culture suppresses conflict, as well as the discussion of alternative ideas during decision‐making meetings. Thus, this particular organizational culture severely limits the range of individual action. Second, even in large, highly‐ordered organizations such as HAPCO, culture never completely dominates action because individuals comment critically on their situation. Consequently, individuals possess the capacity not only to adapt to, but also to challenge and depart from cultural rules. Four general types of strategies for individual action are empirically observed and conceptually distinguished.