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CULTURAL INSTITUTIONALISM
and the ECONOMY
Economic sociologists have long recognized that various cultural
institutions shape forms and processes of markets & organizations
Why is giving gifts to children acceptable, but buying
automobiles for college athletes forbidden?
What if a surrogate mother decides instead to keep her baby?
When should blood be donated or sold?
Should housewives/husbands be paid?
Can children divorce their parents?
Why can you legally buy a massage, but
not the sexual services of a prostitute?
Do you agree that “He who steals my purse steal trash…/But he that filches
from me my good name/Robs me of that which not enriches him/And makes
me poor indeed”? How much would you pay to restore a tarnished reputation?
Culture Club
Culture is the central theoretical concept of anthropology
“A system of shared beliefs, values, customs,
behaviours, and artifacts that the members of
society use to cope with their world and with
one another, and that are transmitted from
generation to generation through learning.”
Franz Boas. 1911. The Mind of Primitive Man. NY: Macmillan.
The symbols-and-meanings approach to culture examines the “system
of such publicly and collectively accepted meanings operating for a
given group at a given time” (Andrew M. Pettigrew 1979:574).
Participants within a culture use its symbols
and communication processes to produce and
reproduce shared values, attitudes, beliefs,
customs, and patterns of language & thought
that are transmitted in their symbolic forms.
Economic Anthropology
Economic anthropologists study pre-industrial societies, where
kinship institutions dominate & production is for use, not a market.
Stephen Gudeman sees livelihoods as culturally constructed. He
tries to represent the “people’s own economic construction,” their
mental maps of such concepts as exchange, property, and profit.
Panamanian peasants don’t exchange to make profits but for an
“exchange of equivalents,” where a good’s value is defined by
expenses to produce it. Only outside merchants make profits in
from the community, a mystery to the peasants how they did so.
Economic values and normative practices of nonmarket societies are
constrained by customs, habits, traditions and are often closely tied to
religious rituals; e.g., planting and harvesting ceremonies. In nonmonetized social systems, barter is the primary form of exchange.
Gift transactions acquire symbolic meanings for communal integration,
as in the Northwest Kwakiutl Indians’ potlatch feasts & the Kula Ring.
The Kula Ring
Kula Ring is a network of visits and gift exchanges that foster life-long
social solidarity among the Trobriand Islanders (Malinowski (1922).
Participants travel hundreds of miles over sea in open
canoes to exchange two Kula valuables: red shell-disc
necklaces (veigun) circle the ring in clockwise and
white shell armbands (mwali) trade counter-clockwise.
If an opening gift is armband, then closing gift must be
necklace and vice versa. Gifts don’t stay permanently,
but pass continuously among thousands of partners.
Kula valuables are non-use items traded purely to
enhance one’s social status, honor & nobility. Marcel
Mauss (1922) described the giver’s act as a “display
of greatness,” in which the giver must show an
exaggerated modesty by down-playing the gift’s
value. Kula partnerships forge strong obligations of
hospitality, protection, and mutual assistance.
The Kula is a solemn exchange ceremony, not to be
conducted like the hard bartering that accompanies
Kula journeys and serves purely economic purposes.
The Philosophy of Money
As money replaced barter, it transformed other forms of social relations.
Apart from its economic exchange functions, money symbolizes and
embodies the modern spirit of rationality, calculability, and impersonality.
In The Philosophy of Money, George Simmel (1858-1918)
analyzed how the cash nexus dissolves bonds of blood and
loyalty. Money gives people the freedom to exercise an
individualized control that is impossible in the traditional
societies – ascribed identities are discarded. While individual
freedom greatly increases, it also creates new social problems
such as alienation, fragmentation, and identity formation.
Money ultimately determines the worth of all cultural objects. Simmel saw a
“tragedy of culture” where social forms inevitably oppose the energies and
interests of life. Metropolitan life is nervous, over-refined, blasé, the source of a
“typically problematical predicament of modern man: the feeling of being
oppressed by an infinity of elements of culture because he can neither
incorporate them into his own personal culture nor - because they are
potential objects of his subjective culture - can he simply ignore or reject
them.”
The Social Meaning of Money
Viviana Zelizer analyzed money as a social medium shaped by personal
networks. Money lies at the intersection of the sacred and the profane:
charity, sexual intimacies, life insurance settlements (e.g., 9/11) ...
“Value” depends on how money is exchanged – as
compensation for services, entitlement, or gift. She
contrasts opposing perspectives “Nothing-But”
(rational exchange), “Hostile Worlds” (moral
indignation), with “Crossroads” (multiple ties
between social processes & economic components).
Zelizer used archival records from 1870-1930 – court cases, immigrant
memoirs, etiquette books, vaudevilles, women's magazine ads, popular
household manuals – to uncover a fundamental transformation in "domestic,
gift and charitable monies.”
Families, individuals, businesses, and governments reshaped money into a
personalized vehicle by earmarking specific funds and inventing myriad new
currencies ranging from housekeeping allowances, "pin money,” and gift
certificates to tips, bonuses, Christmas club savings accounts, food stamps.
Corporate Culture Dynamics
Edgar Schein developed a Assumptions-Values-Artifacts model
of corporate culture, a variable internal to an organization that
explains its work-related structures, practices, outcomes. Mary
Jo Hatch added Symbols and specified that four bi-directional
influence processes link the four elements in the AVAS model.
Organizational cultures change thru interplay of four
clockwise & counter-clockwise influences, evolving
over time and generating a spiraling double-helix:
VALUES
Manifestation
Realization
ASSUMPTIONS
Interpretation
ARTIFACTS
SYMBOLS
Symbolization
Values & Assumptions
Assumptions and Values are deep-structure elements
Assumptions: taken-for-granted beliefs about reality & human nature
Values: social principles, philosophies, goals, and standards considered to
have intrinsic worth
Manifestation occurs when specific values, behavioral norms are
evoked perceptually, cognitively, or emotionally
Realization occurs when values are expressed in outcomes or acts
3M Corp describes itself as a “Culture of Innovation”
• What underlying assumptions does 3M make
regarding human creativity and learning
capabilities?
• How are those assumptions manifested as
values of employees in R&D dept, product
marketing, human resource management?
• Which org’l artifacts express 3M’s values
(e.g., award ceremonies)?
Artifacts & Symbols
Artifacts and Symbols are surface components of org’l culture
Artifacts: the visible, tangible and audible results of activity that are grounded
in values and assumptions
Symbols: anything that represents a conscious or unconscious association
with some wider, usually more abstract, concept or meanings
Symbolization translates artifacts into symbols, linking an
artifact’s literal meaning to its subjective meanings
Interpretation links previous assumptions to possibilities for
new symbolic understandings
What symbolic meanings do you attach to these artifacts?
Have their meanings changed as result of recent events?
Strong Culture  Performance + Control
“Strong” Corp Culture enthusiasm emerged in 1980s academic &
practitioner writings (e.g., Peters & Waterman In Search of Excellence)
• General org’l mission statement sustains high member commitments
• Strong culture provides guidelines for effective actions
• Source of meanings & member identity (1950s IBM “organization men”)
Strong cultures produce superior individual & collective performances?
• Exemplars: 3M, IBM, Kodak, HP; Nonexemplars: Enron, K-Mart, etc
• Strong culture is difficult to imitate/transplant; the competitive advantage
lies in the rarity of reproducing strong cultures inside most orgs
Strong culture is a social control mechanism for reducing supervision
• Origins in an entrepreneurial leader’s values, norms, vision
• Learning an org culture: Recruiting & socializing newcomers to inculcate
commitment (Military boot camp; cult indoctrination; monastic rituals)
• Validation, reinforcement through folklore, stories, legends, interpreting
org’l history as consistent with its cultural values
Organizational Subcultures
Subcultures: Given evident ambiguities held by many organizational
participants, assuming a unitary corporate culture is questionable
Org’l subcultures arise and persist, especially among diverse
occupational communities that make differing, conflicting
assumptions about the most important values to uphold
• Alternative values, interests, and competing occupational commitments
overwhelm participants’ conformity to a single corporate culture
• Many participants resist the culture & identity imposed by the org’s
dominant coalition (the owners and top managers)
Schein identified three conflicting subcultures inside many companies,
whose integration requires orgs to understand better how these
occupational communities learn and interact.
What incompatible assumptions and values are held by:
1.
2.
3.
Executives – in charge of overall corporate strategy
Engineers – professionals engaged in research & design
Operators – direct production & service activities
References
Gudeman, Stephen. 1986. Economics as Culture: Models and Metaphors of Livelihood. London: Routledge.
Hatch, Mary Jo. 1993. “The Dynamics of Organizational Culture.” Academy of Management Review 18:657693.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1920. “Kula: the Circulating Exchange of Valuables in the Archipelagoes of Eastern
New Guinea.” Man 20: 97-105.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and
Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge.
Mauss, M.arcel. 1922. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, London: Routledge.
Pettigrew, Andrew M. 1979. “On Studying Organizational Cultures.” Administrative Science Quarterly 24:570581.
Schein, Edgar H. . 1990. “Organizational Culture.” American Psychologist 45(2):109-119.