IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ororsc/v2y1991i2p170-194.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Organizational Subcultures in a Soft Bureaucracy: Resistance Behind the Myth and Facade of an Official Culture

Author

Listed:
  • John M. Jermier

    (College of Business, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620)

  • John W. Slocum

    (Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275)

  • Louis W. Fry

    (LWF Enterprises, Inc., 4250 Five Points Road, Corpus Christi, Texas 78410)

  • Jeannie Gaines

    (University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701)

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to compare and contrast an organization's official culture and its subcultures. The proposition that soft bureaucracies project a rigid exterior appearance, symbolizing what key stakeholders expect, while masking a loosely-coupled set of interior practices, guided this analysis of a police organization. The official culture (crime-fighting command bureaucracy) was examined as an arbitrary set of symbols and meaning structures arranged according to top management preferences. Using qualitative and quantitative data, the organization's subcultures were profiled. It was demonstrated that top management was unable to impose organization-wide conformance with the official culture. There was close conformance to the official culture in only one of five distinct clusters of officers (“crime-fighting commandoes,” 21 percent of the sample). Officers in the other clusters (“crime-fighting street professionals,” “peace-keeping moral entrepreneurs,” “ass-covering legalists,” and “anti-military social workers”) substantially modified or rejected top management's dictates. They represented resistance subcultures, similar in their opposition to official culture, but unique in form. It was concluded that other organizations, not known for their monolithic image and solidarity, also encompass subcultures.

Suggested Citation

  • John M. Jermier & John W. Slocum & Louis W. Fry & Jeannie Gaines, 1991. "Organizational Subcultures in a Soft Bureaucracy: Resistance Behind the Myth and Facade of an Official Culture," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(2), pages 170-194, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:2:y:1991:i:2:p:170-194
    DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2.2.170
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2.2.170
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/orsc.2.2.170?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tadesse Beyene, 2011. "Diagnosing Ercoe?s Organizational Culture and Indicating Members? Preferred Culture," Journal of Asian Business Strategy, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 1(5), pages 73-77, December.
    2. Bora Coşar & Ülkü Uzunçarşili & Erkut Altindağ, 2020. "Do Not Neglect the Power of Symbols on Employee Performance: An Empirical Evidence From Turkey," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, November.
    3. Müller, Sune Dueholm & Kræmmergaard, Pernille & Mathiassen, Lars, 2008. "Managing Cultural Variation in Software Process Improvement: A Comparison of Methods for Subculture Assessment," Informatics Research Group Working Papers I-2008-01, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Business Studies.
    4. Ahrens, Thomas & Mollona, Massimiliano, 2007. "Organisational control as cultural practice--A shop floor ethnography of a Sheffield steel mill," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(4-5), pages 305-331.
    5. Dag Ingvar Jacobsen & Tore Hillestad & Birgitte Yttri & Jarle Hildrum, 2019. "Alternative Routes To Innovation — The Effects Of Cultural And Structural Fit," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 24(01), pages 1-20, January.
    6. V. Srinivasan (Chino) Rao & Sriraman Ramachandran & Diane Walz, 2013. "Information Security Subcultures of Professional Groups in Organizations: A Conceptual Framework," Working Papers 0218is, College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio.
    7. Gong, Limin & Jiang, Shisong & Liang, Xin, 2022. "Competing value framework-based culture transformation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 853-863.
    8. Welch, Denice E. & Welch, Lawrence S., 2006. "Commitment for hire? The viability of corporate culture as a MNC control mechanism," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 14-28, February.
    9. Paoline, Eugene A., 2003. "Taking stock: Toward a richer understanding of police culture," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 199-214.
    10. Johan M. Berlin & Eric D. Carlström, 2015. "Cultural camouflage—a critical study of how artefacts are camouflaged and mental health policy subverted," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 111-126, April.
    11. Blake E. Ashforth & Kristie M. Rogers & Kevin G. Corley, 2011. "Identity in Organizations: Exploring Cross-Level Dynamics," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(5), pages 1144-1156, October.
    12. Asif, Farah, 2011. "Estimating the impact of Denison's (1996), "What is the difference between organizational culture and organizational climate? A native's point of view on a decade of paradigm wars"," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(5), pages 454-459, May.
    13. Yilmaz, Cengiz & Ergun, Ercan, 2008. "Organizational culture and firm effectiveness: An examination of relative effects of culture traits and the balanced culture hypothesis in an emerging economy," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 290-306, July.
    14. Schaupp Simon, 2021. "Organisationale Technokulturen: Kritik und Humor in der „Industrie 4.0“," Arbeit, De Gruyter, vol. 30(1), pages 3-20, March.
    15. Christina Cregan, 2005. "Can Organizing Work? An Inductive Analysis of Individual Attitudes toward Union Membership," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 58(2), pages 282-304, January.
    16. Łukasz Sułkowski, 2012. "Elements of Organizational Culture – theoretical and methodological problems," Management, Sciendo, vol. 16(2), pages 63-71, December.
    17. TINA M. Sriraman Ramachandran & V. Srinivasan (Chino) Rao & Timothy Goles & Gurpreet Dhillon, 2012. "Variations in Information Security Cultures across Professions: A Qualitative Study," Working Papers 0021, College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio.
    18. David Courpasson & Françoise Dany & Stewart Clegg, 2012. "Resisters at Work: Generating Productive Resistance in the Workplace," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(3), pages 801-819, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:2:y:1991:i:2:p:170-194. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.