The Eye of the Needle: Cultural and Personal Transformation in a Traditional Organization

Abstract

This paper, based on ethnographic material gathered in interviews in a North American automobile manufacturing company, explores a particular, idiosyncratic culture in the process of change. It is argued that resistence to the planned change (a socio-technical re-design) demonstrated by organizational participants resulted in part from the clash between deeply held cultural assumptions and those implicit in the socio-technical re-design. Transformation when it occurred tended to be spearheaded by ideological conversion on the individual level facilitated by internal change agents as much as by the consultants. This case illustrates the truly systematic nature of change and the need to take into account structural, cultural, and personal transformation in any change effort.