On the Naming of the Rose:* Interests and Multiple Meanings as Elements of Organizational Culture

Abstract

Much of the recent literature relating to organizational culture reveals two themes. On the one hand, managerial accounts depict organizations as fostering solidary senti ments, with all participants accepting and upholding joint values. Alternatively, other studies describe organizations as comprising potentially divided interests, which utilize collective values for sectional advantage. An assumption common to both perspectives is that organizational events have single, fixed meanings to all parties. Organizational culture, it seems, is about either pervasive unity or pervasive division. Using empirical materials, it is argued that sentiments and events celebrating the unique identity of machinists in one firm were simultaneously the vehicle for the assertion of boundary and division between interests within this group. Organizational events and processes were capable of multiple interpretation. This theme prompts some concluding generaliza tions, which suggest that organizational culture is defined specifically by processes of constraint between intra-group interests.