Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://dspace.mediu.edu.my:8181/xmlui/handle/1721.1/1610| Title: | Culture Clash: The Corporate Socialization Process Meets Non-Congruent Organization Subcultures |
| Keywords: | socialization General Motors' Saturn Corporation culture corporate |
| Issue Date: | 1-Jun-2013 |
| Description: | The literature on organization socialization suggests characteristics
associated with strong organization culture. Key among these is a socialization
process that emphasizes well-defined roles, rules, routines, and values;
reinforcement with intrinsic and extrinsic reward systems; and conditioning
experiences. That literature also suggests that an organization exhibiting a
strong culture and socialization process will likely elicit participant behavior that
is highly congruent with the espoused values and objectives stated by the
organization.
This paper uses a case study of General Motors' Saturn Corporation to
suggest an enrichment of this theory. We argue that Saturn fulfills all the
requirements of a strong culture and socialization process yet we find patterns of
behavior seemingly at odds with the espoused values and objectives articulated
in the environment. Co-existing with and within the strong corporate culture at
Saturn, we found work group subcultures whose socialization processes can be
just as strong as those at the corporate level but whose values suggest individual
behaviors that conflict with those espoused at the corporate level.
These observations lead us to suggest a model of culture-influenced
behavior that explicitly addresses the existence of distinct subgroup cultures.
Interestingly, the workgroup subcultures that generated behaviors at odds with
the outcomes desired at the corporate level were encouraged by exactly those
reward systems designed by Saturn to reinforce the espoused values of
consensus decision-making at the workgroup level. Such observations
underscore the complexity and subtlety involved in designing coherent
organization-wide cultures and reinforcing mechanisms. MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program and Project Delta at the Sloan School of Management. |
| URI: | http://koha.mediu.edu.my:8181/jspui/handle/1721 |
| Other Identifiers: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1610 |
| Appears in Collections: | MIT Items |
Files in This Item:
There are no files associated with this item.
Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.