Culture and Conformity: An Essay on Individual Adaptation in Centralized Bureaucracy

Abstract

The cultural aspects of organizations have been mostly overlooked in the study of management. This is particularly important because the Protestant ethic which organized the sociopsychological matrix for the industrial revolution no longer commands enough authority to continue organizing individual motivation and societal needs. Thus, local solutions have evolved to deal with cultural ambiguity and they have evolved with little thought as to their implications. In this essay, the cultural aspects of interpersonal relations in a telephone company are analyzed. This analysis was carried out during a year long full-time fieldwork period which employed participant observation, structured and semi-structured interviews, and document analysis for data collection purposes. Strong demands for conformity were found to dominate interpersonal relations. Three types of response to these demands were discovered: acceptance based on conscious suppression of personal interests, acceptance based on unconscious distortion, and secret rejection. These mechanisms for dealing with strong demands for conformity were found to affect managerial development, interpersonal communications, and organizational adaptability. Given these kinds of superior-subordinate relations, it was anticipated that the Bell System will have great difficulty adapting to a competitive marketplace.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

BARNARD, C. The functions of the executive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press , 1938.

BATESON, G. Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books , 1972.

COCHRAN, T. Personal communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1982.

CROZIER, M. The bureaucratic phenomenon. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press , 1964.

DURKHEIM, E. The division of labor in society. New York: The Free Press , 1933.

ERIKSON, E. E. Identity, youth, and crisis. New York: W. W. Norton and Company , 1968.

FESTINGER, L. The theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press , 1957.

FREUD, S. Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. New York: Bantam Books , 1965.

GEERTZ, C. The interpretations of culture. New York: Basic Books , 1973.

10.

JACKALL, R. Moral mazes: Bureaucracy and managerial work . Harvard Business Review, 1983, 61, 118-130 .

11.

KETS DE VRIES, M. F. R. Folie a deaux: Acting out your superior's fantasies . Human Relations, 1978, 31, 905-923 .

12.

KOTTER, J. P. Power, dependence, and effective management . Harvard Business Review, 1977, 55, 125-136 .

13.

MACCOBY, M. The gamesman. New York: Simon and Schuster , 1976.

14.

PARSONS, T. The social system. Glencoe, IL: Scott, Foresman, and Company , 1951.

15.

PFEFFER, J. , & SALANCIK, G. R. The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective. New York: Harper and Row , 1978.

16.

RIEFF, P. The triumph of the therapeutic. New York: Harper and Row , 1966.

17.

SCHEIN, E. Organizational culture: A dynamic model. Technical report, Sloan School of Management, M.I.T., 1983.

18.

SHILS, E. Center and periphery: Essays in macrosociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press , 1974.

19.

SIMMEL, G. In K. Wolff (Ed.), The sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: The Free Press , 1950.

20.

STIGLER, G. The economics of information . The Journal of Political Economy, 1961, 69, 213-225 .

21.

WEBER, M. Max Weber: Essays in sociology. New York: Oxford University Press , 1941.

22.

WINNICOTT, D. W. The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. New York: International Universities Press , 1965.