DISCUSIÓN DE RESULTADOS

Epistemology, the “theory of knowledge”, is the branch of philosophy concerned with the acquisition of knowledge. The question in the context of the present study is “how can we learn something about the role of culture for CI?” and builds directly on the ontological assumptions of this study.

4.3.1 Different approaches to culture

If culture were assumed to be a uniform, static entity “out there” that can be objectively described by its function as is the case in the functionalist perspective currently dominating OM/QM research, then surveying one single “key informant” in a figuratively “elevated” position in an organisation, such as the operations manager, would be sufficient. However, the moment one relaxes the ontological assumption that culture is an immutable, static entity and recognises that the group members actively contribute to the creation of culture through their meaning-making, this perspective becomes somewhat unsatisfying, if not fully inadequate.

I agree with Sinclair and Collins (1994) who assert that “the problem is that the current tools which are promoted[in the field of OM and QM],such as questionnaires and other limited survey techniques, do not allow us to really understand organizations. These give at best a partial view and so we can neither identify nor analyse culture in context” (pp. 26-27).

As Goia and Pitre fittingly argued in this connection:

The assumptions of the functionalist paradigm… become problematic when subjective views of social and organizational phenomena are adopted.... The study of phenomena such as sensemaking, meaning construction, power, and conflict becomes very awkward to handle using any immutable objectivist framework. What is "out there" becomes very much related to interpretations made "in here" (internal to both the organization members under study and the researchers conducting the study). (1990, p. 587)

Indeed, if culture is understood as a dynamic, emergent property that is constructed through meaning-making of group members, it is a lot less clear “whether or not human beings can ever achieve any form of knowledge that is independent of their own subjective construction, since they are the agents through which knowledge is perceived or experienced” (Morgan & Smircich, 1980, p. 493).

Let us look at some alternative approaches. As Lewis (1996a) remarked, many scholars in OS concentrated on the study of language after Pettigrew (1979) had underlined the importance of organisational myths, symbols, ideologies, beliefs, and rituals for studying organisational culture. From this focus on language emerged what became known as the “linguistic turn” in OS (Heracleous, 2004).

While it is true that language enables us to articulate experience and meanings and that organisational culture becomes often manifest in parlance such as set phrases, processes and forms, I argue that language only reflects partial aspects of a culture. The importance of non-verbal processes and actual work practices limit the possibilities of the study of language as a “carrier” of culture. Moreover, front-line workers do not necessarily make use of linguistic nuances that would lend themselves to sophisticated discursive analyses.

This is in line with other scholars who argue that the near exclusive focus on language and discourse in the social constructionist perspective “has produced a corresponding lack of attention to other significant elements in human life” (Cromby & Nightingale, 1999, p. 2). Similarly, Alvesson (2004) declared that "an interest in cultural meaning

goes beyond manifest language use. From a cultural point of view meaning is not only based in language, but also in actions and artefacts, in taken-for-granted assumptions and ideas that people may have a problem in verbalizing" (p. 328).

While I believe that the study of language can be important to supplement other sources of insights, I argue that "a cultural approach to organizations would be language-sensitive, but not necessarily language focused" (Alvesson, 2004, p. 317). Specifically with regard to CI, the study of language, i.e. another “remote” method, is only conditionally suitable; I consent with Craighead and Meredith (2008) in that

it is becoming more important that we, as scholars, directly observe the reality that we wish to study, especially for developing rather than testing theory. As an applied discipline, OM scholars cannot fully capture the complexity of these phenomena through “remote” methods such as artificial reconstruction and/or surveys. (p. 723)

4.3.2 Learning about culture

As an ideational construct, a group’s culture does not reveal itself easily to the beholder. Furthermore, an unequivocally undisputed point amongst scholars of both societal and organisational culture is that culture is best viewed as unconscious, below awareness or deeply internalised.

Smircich (1985) explains that “to study culture means to study social significance - how things, events, and interactions come to be meaningful. Studying culture means studying ‘world making’”(p. 63). Schulz (1995) adds, “a cultural way of studying organizations is to study the meanings of organizational behavior - or more specifically, the meanings and beliefs which members of organizations assign to organizational behavior and how these assigned meanings influence the ways in which they behave” (Schulz, 1995, p. 5).

Guba and Lincoln (2005) write in this regard that "the meaning-making activities themselves are of central interest… simply because it is the meaning-making/sense- making/attributional activities that shape action (or inaction)" (p. 197).

If meaning-making is understood as a dynamic, emergent process rather than a static, inherent property, then concepts and practices do not possess meaning independently. In accordance with duality of culture, it is not only necessary to study how individual cultural values relate to subjective meanings of CI but also the social context and conditions within the organisation that enable the accounts that are provided. Subjective meanings reflect the point of view of organisational member and therefore need to be studied in context (Evered & Louis, 1981)9

Using the words of Oyserman, Kemmelmeier and Coon (2002), it is important to concentrate not only

.

on the features of situations but on the cultural-laden ways in which situations are construed – the subjective meaning they have for individuals. This approach integrates cultural psychology with social cognition by arguing that culture matters because it influences subjective construal of situations, and it is these subjective construals that should be the focus of our attention. (p. 113)

Consistent with the conceptualisation of culture in the present study the situational factors included leadership and organisational institutions, but also the dynamics that evolve within the group and behavioural consequences.

If meaning-making is at the core of the culture construct, it affects equally the researcher in his effort to make sense of his social environment. This makes the research an inherent part of the epistemology and will be discussed next

4.3.3 Role of the researcher

Following Schein’s (1985) argument, an adequate method to study culture involves the interaction and exposure of an organisational outsider to the cultural setting. The researcher must expose himself to the group’s culture and methodically study how particularly the behavioural aspects of CI (also referred to as 'infrastructure practices'

9 _{The relationship between and a subjective and objective perspective on culture is discussed in more}

in Naor, et al., 2008) or “soft criteria” (W. Lewis, G., et al., 2006) are ascribed their meaning through the individual and on the group level – and thus become effective. However, if meanings are subjective and originate from the group members, he must refrain from imposing predefined categories onto the data; in other words, gain an insider’s or emic _{view of the group’s culture. The research process leads from data to}

theory, i.e. through an inductive rather than a hypothetico-deductive approach. Similarly, Sackmann (2001) argued that, “inductive research approaches applying qualitative methodologies are a sine qua non to grasp the core of culture and cultural complexity form the insider's perspective" (p. 160).

What can be understood as out there (the group’s culture) is very much related to the processes “in here” in both the group members – and _{the researcher. Perhaps it is best}

to understand the researcher as an instrument that is immutably calibrated to one culture so that the output reading always reflects this calibration. If an understanding of culture emerges from the interaction of the researcher within a cultural setting, reflecting upon the researcher’s own culture is as important as describing the researched. Thus objectivity in a realist sense is impossible. It becomes imperative to disclose and critically reflect the researcher’s own cultural active or passive role within the research process – what I will discuss as reflexivity _{at the end of this thesis.}

The concept of duality implies that studying a group’s culture involves tapping both individual cognitive processes of meaning-making as well as the cultural dynamics of the group setting. By implication, the role of the researcher shifts between the one of detached observation and explanation when analysing individual cognitions to one of active involvement, understanding and interpretation when deciphering the group’s shared meanings.

In this connection, Erez and Earley (1993) wrote that “the differing roles of the researchers in the cognitive versus interpretive approaches to understand cultural systems is striking” (p. 66). Similarly, Calás and Smircich (1987) explained that

traditionally, explanation and understanding are framed as opposite ways of knowing and pursuing inquiry. Explanation, as evident in positivist science, follows the model of the natural or physical world in which hypothesis testing, experimentation, verification or falsification, and generalizations are expected. Understanding, in contrast, relies on interpretations of subjective meanings; thus generalizations are not required or expected. Explanations takes the view of the world from the outside, while understanding takes the view of the world from the inside. (p. 232)

Put another way, the above mentioned different roles of the researcher imply a crossing of paradigmatic boundaries. Consequently the next section is concerned with the possibility to combine research practice from different paradigms.

4.3.4 Paradigm incommensurability

According to Guba (1990), a paradigm is a "a basic set of beliefs that guides action" (p. 17) in research practice10

Just as with functionalism, there is little clarity around the terms associated with it. Generally speaking, the interpretivist paradigm is associated with the subjectivist

approach to research and views reality as socially constructed_{; the use of these terms}

usually indicates reference to features of the interpretivist paradigm. The distinctive approaches to cultural studies are contrasted in

. The main contrasting paradigms in the study of culture are functionalism and interpretivism. They have developed from different scientific traditions (Schultz & Hatch, 1996). The assumptions of functionalism were described and critically analysed as part of the literature review. As opposed to the functionalist worldview, where reality is simply seen as “out there” and can be discovered in an objective way, the world in the interpretivist perspective is socially constructed and therefore inherently subjective.

Table 6.

10 _{The conceptual parallels to the notion of culture are evident, as already suggested in Chapter 3.6}

As mentioned before, the culture movement was initially the “code word for the subjective side of organisational life” and “its study represented an ontological rebellion against the dominant functionalist or ‘scientific’ paradigm” (Meyson, as cited in Cheyne & Loan-Clarke, 2009, p. 250).

Table 6: Differences between the functionalist and interpretivist paradigms in cultural studies in organisations (extended from Schultz & Hatch, 1996)

Functionalism Interpretivism

Analytical

framework Predefined and universallevels and functions of culture are : Similar assumed to exist in all organisations.

Emergent and specific: Opportunities for the creation of meaning are unique in each context.

Stance of researcher Remote, disinterested researcher Researcher becoming part of the evolving culture-bearing events to see the culture from the perspective of an organisation “insider”.

Level of interest Organisational function (level of

individual employee is viewed as idiosyncratic unless he or she can be seen a “key informant”)

Meanings are deemed adequate at the level of individual employees.

Model of analysis Categorical: Causal relations

between cultural elements Associative: Meanings and the association between them Analytical process Convergent: Condenses and brings

elements of cultural analysis together.

Divergent: Expands and enriches data. Apply interpretative schemes, discern patterns but preserve unique representation.

Mode of theory

generation Deductive, highly structured Inductive and cyclical: Generation of theory and further data collection are intertwined.

The differences in research practice were repeatedly cause for dissent, and as in the case of the “culture wars” in OS that were described as part of the literature review, and sometimes staged in the open: Lincoln (1990), a self proclaimed constructionist (and therefore adhering to the interpretivist paradigm), stated that "accommodation between paradigms is impossible" (p. 81) and argued that

the socialization process associated with each paradigm are sufficiently divergent, and the emotional and political commitments so high, that a mix-and-match strategy, at either the axiomatic or the practical level, is likely to produce little more than internal dissonance in the research process, a form of discursive incoherence that renders the findings useless for both groups. (p. 81)

In line with this argument, a study that crosses paradigmatic boundaries would undermine its own credibility and be compromised by its very existence.

However, shortly after the influential work of Burrell and Morgan (1979), which popularised the idea paradigm incommensurability in OS (see Figure 9; the paradigms of interpretivism and functionalism that are displayed in the bottom half of the figure, are most relevant for this study), i.e. the impossibility for a researcher to operate within more than one paradigm at a time, others scholars began to dispute this idea. Morey and Luthans (1984), for instance, did not consider subjective and objective approaches to organisational studies mutually exclusive, but complementary.

Figure 9: Burrell and Morgan's (1979) typology of paradigms for the analysis of social theory (Source: Burrell & Morgan, 1979, p. 22)

Other scholars followed and proposed approaches to reconcile paradigmatic differences, many of which in cultural research, such as the “paradigm interplay” (Schultz & Hatch, 1996), “metatriangulation” between paradigms (M. W. Lewis & Grimes, 1999), “multiparadigm perspectives” (Gioia & Pitre, 1990), the “multiple cultures perspective” (Sackmann & Phillips, 2004), “multiparadigm inquiry”, (M. W. Lewis & Kelemen, 2002), “paradigmapping” (Lowe, Moore, & Carr, 2007) or one paradigm informing another in sequence (Gioia, Donnellon, & Sims Jr, 1989).

However, it is clear that the demarcation lines between “existing research paradigms cause biases in information search and block opportunities for collecting and interpreting data that contradict existing paradigms" (Erez & Earley, 1993, p. 10). Therefore, as Sackmann (2001) argued, a "thoughtful assessment and research efforts apply not only a combination of data collection and data analysis methods, they are also able to combine different research paradigms _{and create inventive research}

designs to take into account the specifics of the concept of culture and its complexity within organizational settings" (2001, p. 153, emphasis added). Similarly, Erez and

Earley (1993) suggested viewing the different viewpoints as “as complementary rather than competing” (p. 66).

The argument of paradigm incommensurability can also be challenged from another perspective: Recently, Magala (2008) described the idea of paradigm incommensurability as merely a “defensive doctrine” and asserted forcefully that “in their quest for defence weapons against neopositivism... postmodern social constructivists had embraced radical incommensurability thesis... and applied it to their footholds in academia, which they wanted to defend against the neopositivist onslaught" (p. 243).

Similarly, Cromby and Nightingale (1999) argued that the radical social constructionist position of

Relativism is not just a theoretical perspective or philosophical claim. Relativism is simultaneously a culturally offered rhetorical resource that can be drawn upon to disparage 'realist' arguments (as unsophisticated, as failures to understand the subtleties or nuances of relativists' claims and so on), and so avoid the need to take seriously the entirely reasonable questions that are being raised. (p. 9)

They concluded that “the discursive turn [i.e. the constructionist focus on language and discourse] is threatening to become a discursive retreat” (p. 13).

In summary, there is a dispute amongst scholars as to whether research approaches can cross paradigmatic boundaries. While earlier contributions tend to adhere to the “paradigm incommensurability” position, there are increasing doubts about both the general idea of paradigm incommensurability and the rationale behind it. A number of scholars of culture have suggested that the positions are complementary and demanded to combine the power of different paradigms to gain more meaningful insights. For further discussion concerning the compatibility of different theoretical perspectives on culture see Appendix L.

4.3.5 Paradigmatic positioning of this study

Due to what I described as the duality of culture, the present study does not fit neatly into any of the existing paradigms as described in Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) well- known typology (see Figure 9) – it is neither only “out there”, ready to be objectively observed (i.e. a naïve realist ontology) nor is it purely an ongoing social construction11

I adjust the social construction of reality an essential role for the understanding of culture, but I refuse to confine the study of culture to language and discourse, as in the case in the “linguistic turn”. Like others before me (e.g. Cromby & Nightingale, 1999), I reject to leave aside essential sources of meaning that lie largely outside the sphere of language and discourse, such as organisational institutions, constraints inherent in the socialisation of people (implicit in internalised value orientations), non-verbal processes and work practices.

(i.e. a constructionist ontology). In the conceptualisation of culture underlying this study, culture is the result of both individual cognition and _{social processes.}

Moreover, I argue that the rejection of naïve realism does not imply the need to adopt an extreme relativistic position. The deficits in representation of reality in our data and reports do not, in my view, implicate that we as scholars can resort to pointing out the futility of “the modernist project”. On the contrary, it increases the need to scrutinise our assumptions, methods and knowledge claims. In this sense I agree with Philips (1990) in that "it simply does not follow from the fact of social construction of reality that scientific inquiry becomes impossible or that we have to become relativists" (p. 42).

11 _{Two different terms are often used in relation to socially constructed realities: Social constructionism}

and social constructivism. Although the definitions differ, social constructivism is more concerned with the individual’s meaning-making whereas social constructionism focuses on the emergence of phenomena relative to the social context. Put another way, while constructivism deals with individual psychologies, constructionism takes a sociological perspective. Therefore they are complementary views on the same process of socially constructed reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).

Thus the study preserves a cautious and critical ontological stance similar to what Miles and Huberman (1994) described as “transcendental realism”, meaning that

social phenomena exist not only in the mind but also in the objective world – that some lawful and reasonably stable relationships are to be found amongst them. The lawfulness comes from the regularities and sequences that link together phenomena. From these patterns we can derive constructs that underlie individual and social life. The fact that most of those constructs are invisible to the human eye does not make them invalid. (p. 4)

It also maintains the principal desirability of truth, i.e. seeking to understand these “lawful and reasonable stable relationships” but it abandons an objectivist approach. Instead, it acknowledges that culture is not “out there”, ready to be revealed, but