Abstract
The appropriate level of analysis for the study of culture has been contested. There is a tradition of conceptualizing culture apart from the individuals who interact within a society. Alternately, there is a tradition of seeing culture only in the minds of individuals in society. The authors’ contention is that there is no choice here; both perspectives are valid and can be integrated within a single framework. Borrowing the concept of integral aggregate variable from epidemiology, they argue that there are both integral aggregate properties of culture and integral individual properties of culture. Both dimensions of culture can be examined using cultural consensus analysis. With data on organizational culture, the authors show how an investigator can move from one level of analysis to another. These results illustrate how integral aggregate properties of culture can be extracted from individual data using consensus analysis and be used as measures of aggregate units of analysis.
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