In this article a theoretical reconstruction is given of parts of the content of In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman, 1982). It evolves that the internal dynamics of excellent companies are very similar to those of social movements. Two recent discussion points, with regard to the decline and to the ethical dimension of excellent companies, can be better understood using this analogy. Furthermore, it provides us with avenues for further research.
This article is primarily concerned with exploring the relationships between organizational climate and characteristics of organizational environments. Environmental characteristics include dependencies, competition and uncertainty. In addition, the relationship of climate and environments with dimensions of organizational structure and size are examined. Using data from 15 industrial organizations in Britain, the results have shown that different environmental characteristics have different associations with organizational climate. Also, the relationships between organizational environments and climate are not similar to those found between environments and structure. It is suggested that the creation of appropriate climates and structural design as responses to environmental pressures may be considered as complementary strategies in an attempt to maintain administrative control. The results, therefore, provide support for the suggestion that, in order to improve our understanding of the dynamics of organizational climate, characteristics of organizational environments should be incorporated into future research designs.
This paper reports on a research study about the organizational cultures of a number of textile manufacturing plants from both the public and the private sector in Ahmedabad, India. These plants were shown to vary along one aspect of their work‐group behaviour, namely the rate of ‘loitering’ among loomshed workers. The concept of ‘culture’ is defined in terms of the shared beliefs, values, norms and traditions within the organizations. Methods of observation and informal open‐ended interviews were used to identify elements and/or dimensions of organizational culture, which were subsequently measured through structured interviews with loomshed workers. The study shows a definite relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘loitering’; however, the critical elements of culture influencing loitering behaviour vary from public to private sector plants. The implications of the findings of the study for the plants under reference, for production organizations in general as well as for organization theory are discussed.
Like most experience, people endow organizations with meaning. Meaninggiving has been explained as a categorization process of matching stimuli against prototypes. This study explores the applicability of such a view to organizations by focusing on a central component of the perspective ‐ prototypes. A phenomenological design is used to uncover the content of organizational prototypes. Data collected from a sample of managers in the financial industry demonstrate the utility of the prototype notion, indicating that further exploration is warranted of how organizations are categorized.
The concept of ‘organizational culture’ proves to be fruitless when applied to organizations in socialist economies. Instead, this paper focuses on a more general relationship between organizational life and the cultural context of organizing. Three examples illustrate the proposed approach. In the first, the Polish ‘propaganda of success’, used in the years 1970–80 by the ruling élite , is analyzed as a case of the use of ideology to manage the meaning shared by participants in economic life. In the second, the battle between the government and the Solidarity movement is interpreted as a battle over meanings. In both examples, the successful management of meaning demands the fit between ideology and national culture. The third example, contrasting Polish and American myths about the origins of organizational effectiveness, shows how everyday organizational life is embedded in the historical and cultural context of a given country. The paper ends with a proposal to concentrate further research efforts on the complex relationships between organizational control and culture.
The terms proactive and reactive are frequently used to describe managers. This paper examines the proactive‐reactive behaviour patterns of 16 top‐level managers and compares their behaviour patterns with conceptual views from the literature. The usefulness of the proactive‐reactive dichotomy is evaluated and issues are raised concerning the proactive‐reactive label. It is concluded that the dichotomy is overly simplistic for describing complex managerial behaviour and a more complex model is proposed for examining the proactive dimension.
Marketing can be viewed as organized rational innovation ‐ a function concerned with identifying the opportunity for change, inducing the action required and monitoring the change once introduced. This viewpoint establishes innovation as an eighth paradigm for marketing, alongside seven paradigms previously recognized within marketing theory. It is the only paradigm to focus directly on the function of marketing ‐ on what the marketer actually does. As such, it draws traditional marketing management literature into marketing theory and highlights the problem of establishing and maintaining an innovative marketing function within an organizational environment resistant to change.