Elsevier

Long Range Planning

Volume 21, Issue 4, August 1988, Pages 121-129
Long Range Planning

Strategy, organizational culture and symbolism

https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-6301(88)90016-7Get rights and content

Abstract

Managerial thinking on the relationship between strategy and organizational culture tends to be informed by a static perspective. Culture is viewed as normative values and beliefs which enforce a relatively homogenous, fixed set of behaviours—‘the way we do things around here’. Because culture is fossilized in habit, it resists change and frustrates strategy formulation and implementation. This article develops an alternative, dynamic and process-based model of culture. Culture is redefined as ‘the significant shared meanings which allow managers collectively to make sense of what they and others do’. Strategy constitutes an important constellation of these meanings and strategic management is a cultural process aimed at altering managers' interpretations about the fundamental nature and purpose of their organization and their roles within it. It is argued that senior executives seeking strategic change need to pay more attention to what messages they are seeking to communicate and how these messages are likely to be received. In this way, they can more readily hit on the right language and symbolic action to influence strategy.

References (45)

  • Thomas Peters et al.

    In Search of Excellence

    (1982)
  • Terence E. Deal et al.

    Corporate Culture: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life

    (1982)
  • William G. Ouchi

    Theory Z

    (1981)
  • Athos et al.

    The Art of Japanese Management

    (1984)
  • Sandra Salmans

    New vogue: company culture

    New York Times

    (7 January 1983)
  • Linda Smircich

    Concepts of culture and organisational analysis

    Administrative Sciences Quarterly

    (1983)
  • Larry E. Greiner

    Senior executives as strategic actors

    New Management

    (1984)
  • Noel Tichy

    The essentials of strategic change management

    Journal of Business Strategy

    (Spring 1983)
  • A.L. Kroeber et al.

    Culture: a Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions

    (1952)
  • Edgar H. Schein

    Coming to an awareness of organisational culture

    Sloan Management Review

    (Winter 1984)
  • William H. Whyte

    The Organisation Man

    (1972)
  • Clifford Geertz

    The Interpretation of Cultures

    (1975)
  • Business Week

    (3 October 1983)
  • Kathleen L. Gregory

    Native-view paradigms: multiple cultures and culture conflicts in organisations

    Administrative Sciences Quarterly

    (1983)
  • Joanne Martin et al.

    Organizational culture and counterculture: an uneasy symbiosis

    Organizational Dynamics

    (Autumn 1983)
  • John Hunt

    The shifting focus of the personnel function

    Personnel Management

    (February 1984)
  • William G. Ouchi

    Markets, bureaucracies and clans

    Administrative Sciences Quarterly

    (March 1980)
  • John Child

    Organizational structure, environment and performance: the role of strategic choice

    Sociology

    (1972)
  • Raymond E. Miles et al.

    Organization-environment: concepts and issues

    Industrial Relations

    (1974)
  • Charles R. Schwenk

    Cognitive simplification processes in strategic decision-making

    Strategic Management Journal

    (1984)
  • Howard Schwartz et al.

    Matching corporate culture and business strategy

    Organizational Dynamics

    (Summer 1981)
  • Cited by (29)

    • How to implement a winning strategy

      1989, European Management Journal
    View all citing articles on Scopus

    Dr Sebastian Green is Senior Lecturer at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. He was previously Research Associate at the Centre for Business Strategy, London Business School.

    View full text