Corporate culture as an analytical frame - a brief note

Corporate culture is a set of shared value and assumptions by an organization. Corporate cultural lens has been employed in organizational analysis, e.g. Handy (1978). It can be employed in the form of a critical organizational diagnostic approach, e.g. Schein (1999). Martin (1992) points that that there are three perspectives in corporate cultural analysis; this implies that cultural analysis requires sophisticated intellectual competence to conduct. Specific examples of cultural analysis which reflect the richness of perspectives that can be adopted are provided in Frost et al. (1991). Finally, there is also a body of literature of on national culture that is more related to global business study, e.g. Trompenaars (1993) and Hofstede (1991).

Overall, the corporate cultural lens has been used in a broad range of management subjects but it takes very serious effort to master cultural analysis skill in order to apply in dissertation works and in actual business practices.






References

1. Frost, P.J., Moore, L.F., Louis, M.R., Lundberg, C.C. and Martin, J. (editors) (1991) Reframing Organizational Culture, Sage.
2. Handy, C. (1978) Gods of Management, Pan Books.
3. Hofstede, G. (1991) Cultures and Organizations: Software of the mind, McGraw-Hill.
4. Schein, E. (1999) The corporate culture survival guide, Jossey-Bass Publishers.
5. Martin, J. (1992) Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives, Oxford University Press.
6. On organizational culture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture
7. Trompenaars, F. (1993) Riding the waves of culture, Nicolas Brealey Publishing.