Many may admit that analyses of business structures have their origins in classical anthropology, but some may prefer to emphasize the link to current sociology. Vaara (1999) devotes his paper to the true interpretation of business culture building thus offering a critical viewpoint on both the anthropological and sociological approaches to this discourse.
Although efforts to research businesses from a cultural standpoint had previously been made, a mainstream curiosity about the cultural trending within business arose enormously by the end of the 1970s. Such curiosity sparked equally theoretical and functional research activities.
From that time on, a continuing controversy in business literature about the methodological, analytical, conceptual as well as philosophical basis of research into cultural businesses has been ongoing (see Frost and Martin, 1996). As a result, several approaches as well as meanings of business structures exist, varying in respect of being more structuralist to further abstract perceptions, from more metaphysical to further realistic approaches. Eventually, it ranges between quieter critics to louder critics. People have often suggested that the term
“business culture” is an oxymoron since culture's borders are not conceptually or empirically measurable (Vaara, 1999).
The line between study with a more “realism” philosophical attitude and conceptual method to cultures and research with a rather "constructivism" philosophical position as well as
conceptual method to cultures is blurring. Several other historically and technically focused scholars had a “realism” view on culture. As per such point of view, culture means anything where representatives of a unit – a business or a country – exhibit. While probably impossible, this seems also conceivable to discover the central aspects of a specific organizational (see Schein, 1992) or national (see Hofstede, 1994) culture through observing behavioral trends, beliefs as well as actions of the cultures' representatives. Rather than seeing cultures as simple value structures, most researchers who advocate the realist perspective see cultures as multifaceted constellations. The model, which was created by Schein at the end of 20th century, distinguishes objects, meanings as well as fundamental premises, is particularly common in this sense. Given that, it is necessary to depict some of the misconceptions that have arisen as a result to the contentious approach to current business studies (Vaara, 1999).
The first fallacy is that cultural distinction, fragmentation, contradictions, and ambiguities are ignored. Researchers and practitioners (Ogbonna and Harris, 1998) have a clear desire to interpret business culture as unitary value structures. This may be an unintended result of social similarities or the setting of boundaries in socioeconomic identification systems. As per such prevalent “integration” viewpoint, uniformity, cohesion as well as solidarity seem to be features of organizational cultures as well as cultural transition is seen as a phase of organization-wide restructuring in which previous homogeneity is replaced with a fresh unity.
This is a widely held belief, notwithstanding the fact that cultural business studies have offered enough reflection on the topic of how organizations are affected by various forms of cultural divisions. This was often stated that corporate value structures are not often explicitly defined or internally coherent, and that they can include contradictory and unclear components. It was Martin (1992), who considers distinction as well as segmentation views to be comparable to the conventional incorporation of unified vision. According to the logic, the unified perspective will only include knowledge on views that are shared by the whole
Although scholars in this area have provided useful details on cultural transition processes, they have not put particular emphasis on the reality where the business cultures of integrating companies seem to be hesitant toward being inwardly uniform, coherent as well as clear ideologies. Such trend tends to be a deceptive beginning, especially for huge firms with various divisions and can function in multiple areas. Nonetheless, there is a severe scarcity of systematic research attempting to overcome the “integration” view. The argument to be made is that, in the absence of a finer-grained study, the prevailing integration viewpoint appears to conceal the reality that cultural transition processes can vary greatly across integrating organizations, across various sub-groups of individuals, and across organizational structures.
This conceptualization can often conceal differences and ambiguities of belief structures, which may be seen as essential test subjects rather than contradictions to be rejected. A very simple proposition is that the more cohesive specific value systems are, the more immune they are to reform (Vaara, 1999).
The second myth is based on a misunderstanding of intercultural fluidity as well as environmental embedding. When studying business cultures, there is a strong desire to make sharp distinctions. This is a somewhat common result of social recognition mechanisms in which one's personality is formed in such a way that it appears distinct from others. It has often proven impossible to conceptually overcome corporate constraints while researching business culture in academic settings. While business culture researchers have recently focused on issues which were related to the incorrect understanding how business cultures are fluid as well as rooted in their contexts, this has been a prevalent tendency (see Frost and Martin, 1996). Martin (1992), for example, has defined business cultures as a nexus where environmental forces converge, resulting in a layered, overlaying range of subcultures inside fluid company boundaries. Later, she portrayed business culture borders as dynamic, changeable, fluid, distorted, or sometimes risky. Scientists have even demonstrated ways habitats may be split such that various subcultures face distinct environmental consequences.
The research made by Gregory in 1983 demonstrates the way operational sub-units inside a company may embody workplace subcultures which cross organizational borders is a frequently cited example. Ironically, researchers working on national cultural disparities have run into similar issues nationally. National borders became challenging for them to cross, resulting in issues of conventional definitions of foreign assessments (Trompenaars, 2011;
Hofstede, 1994). This seems to be the situation, notwithstanding the fact that many have identified issues such as the rigidity of national boundaries or the decoupling of business culture and regional position of global companies in these studies (see Calori et al., 1997) (Vaara, 1999).
The third misconception is that there is so much emphasis on complex notion as well as and a shortage of commitment to corporate activities. Cultural studies get a distinct chance to rely on principles and ideals while necessarily defining their relationship to "real" organization's policies. This happens partially due to the importance of cultural assessments of business studies which are regarded as a “soft” counterpoint to the “hard” conventional study, allowing for a focus on factors such as metaphors, stories, or feelings that are overlooked in many more studies (Frost and Martin, 1996). Such effect is often linked to searching an underpinning ideal as well as principles held by the individuals in issue inside the businesses. Schein (1992) advocated business cultures being structures that depend upon simple ideas about fact, timing and space. Hofstede sought the “collective programming of the mind” (Hofstede, 1994, p.1) in national cultures in the international sense. Their points of view have often been misconstrued, causing individuals to overly abstract principles and ideals from corporate activities in pursuit of universal commonalities of a group as well as its participants. Such emphasis on “abstract beliefs and values” became a regular practice, particularly regarding
“cultural engineering” writings, which encouraged the perception where leaders may and ought to establish, maintain as well as exploit business culture through rhetoric, effective leadership as well as cleverly engineered cultural activities to foster a favorable environment that leads to business being effective and ultimately successful (Peters and Waterman, 1982;
Deal and Kennedy, 1982). Such approach stands in sharp contradiction to anthropologically based research in organizational area, which upheld an ethnographic practice of connecting all cultural study to the everyday function of aforementioned individuals, including a rigid choice for observational research as the most important analytical option (Kunda, 2006). Others have
begun to change this around, emphasizing the importance of practices of understanding the traditions of the organizations or societies in question (see Hutchins, 1995).
The fourth fallacy, on the topic of overemphasis, portrays a growing emphasis upon original fundamental discrepancies as well as an insufficient attention to the current cultural level. In cultural organization studies, there is a general propensity to concentrate on societies as systems rather than mechanisms of cultural transition. Thus, the studies also advocate a structuralist viewpoint in which the focus is on traditional cultural systems and no regard is given to the formation of new values and behaviors. This is attributed, for example, to methodological issues associated with analyzing transition mechanisms which last usually very long. Articles which focus mainly on management include explanations and guidance about how to handle institutional transformation mechanisms by developing a new organizational or business culture (Vaara, 1999).
The fifth cultural concept misconception of business culture is a failure to recognize the political aspects. There is frequently an embedded political setting in cultural studies where people from diverse cultures are treated as advocates of their beliefs. The greater the reliance in belief structures on ideals or other normative components, the more powerful the underlying political environment (Vaara, 1999). Specific developments within cultural organization research have often specifically adopted a negative and politic perspective while investigating the evolution of various corporate sub-cultures as well as the underlying power ties (Lucas, 1987). Adopting a political approach in each of these experiments has often included having an ideological stand, typically in favor of employers and against management (Young, 1989).
The last myth discussed in this thesis is the inability to consider cultural distinctions as sources of meaning and understanding. In cultural analyses, there is a general propensity to consider cultural coherence as a favorable trait and cultural disparities as troublesome.
Cultural variations have shown to be a highly powerful methodological instrument for scientific analyses, contributing to research designs under which organizational challenges are clarified by those differences (Vaara, 1999). Such phenomenon became a widespread trend, considering the fact that several business culture researchers expressly called for the benefits of cultural heterogeneity as well as have repeatedly cautioned against drawing overly strong conclusions regarding the relationship between cultural disparities and financial success (see Frost and Martin, 1996).
These misunderstandings suggest that scholars ought to delve deeper where better and concrete perceptions as well as less vague dialogue so as to unravel the social frameworks as well as mechanisms at the root of recurring post-merger organizational issues. This may also include searching for novel conceptualizations outside of the field of cultural business studies.
As discussed in the previous pages, this could imply clear incorporation of conceptualizations and concepts from institutional, governmental, and cognitive organization research. Finally, when it comes to understanding business culture issues, cultural discrepancies have a lot of explanatory strength. However, this obvious causal influence has made it all too convenient to blame cultural discrepancies for conflicts or disappointments. This has resulted in technically nebulous and undefined concepts, as well as potentially risky simplifications that can mislead corporate decision-makers.
5 Conclusion
Within this thesis, the main objectives were to provide understanding of what culture is based on literature research and to portray the misconception of culture within the business literature. The first main objective was achieved by scrutinizing the concepts of culture and the century discussion in the second chapter while providing many points of anthropological and sociological views. This, later on, presented the backbone of cultural definition in the thesis.
The second main objective was to depict the fallacy of “business culture” and its implications in many business studies. In order to do that, “business culture” as a term was defined and two different approaches to business dimensions were introduced in the third chapter. Given the fact that the term “business culture” was determined, the fourth chapter provided a discussion about reasons for misunderstanding, developing on a vast critique of simplification, stereotyping and quantification of culture which occur in Hofstede’s work and many of others.
To conclude, this thesis provided a complex view on the concept of cultures as well as on the
“business culture”. The term “business culture” has become a controversial topic of many discussions over the past decades since contains popular cultural clichés in the field of business and management literature. As demonstrated in the second part of the thesis, the term culture is not perfectly conceptualized and properly used in many literature sources. This thesis helped to realize that the culture, as a loosely integrated and fluid system which is a subject to constant change, should not and cannot be quantified in respect of business studies and it should be treated in a very delicate way due to its complexity and boundness nature.
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