Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain (Foundations for Organizational Science)

Organizational Culture provides a sweeping interdisciplinary overview of the organizational culture literature, showing how and why researchers have disagreed about such fundamental questions as: What is organizational culture? What are the major theoretical perspectives used to understand cultures in organizations? How can a researcher decipher the political interests inherent in research that claims to be political neutral -- merely "descriptive"?

Expert author Joanne Martin examines a variety of conflicting ways to study cultures in organizations, including different theoretical orientations, political ideologies (managerial, critical, and apparently neutral); methods (qualitative, quantitative, and hybrid approaches), and styles of writing about culture (ranging from traditional to postmodern and experimental). In addition, she offers a guide for those who might want to study culture themselves, addressing such issues as: What qualitative, quantitative, and hybrid methods can be used to study culture? What standards are used when reviewers evaluate these various types of research? What innovative ways of writing about culture have been introduced? And finally, what are the most important unanswered questions for future organizational culture researchers?

Intended for graduate students and established scholars who need to understand, value, and utilize highly divergent approaches to the study of culture. The book will also be useful for researchers who do not study culture, but who are interested in the ways political interests affect scholarly writing, the ways critical and managerial approaches to theory differ, the use and justification of qualitative methods in domains where quantitative methods are the norm.

Joanne Martin is the Merrill Professor of Organizational Behavior, and by courtesy, Sociology, at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. She was awarded the Distinguished Educator Award from the Academy of Management in 2000, an honorary doctorate in Economics and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School in 2001, and the Centennial Medal from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, in 2002. Professor Martin serves on Advisory Boards of Universities, in the US and abroad, and is a member of the Board of Directors of CPP Inc., a publishing company. She currently studies culture and gender in organizations.