But back to the text...
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The major article heading for this section is "Culture as a Root Metaphor for Conceptualizing Organization".
"The previous two ways the terms culture and organization are linked in the literature with the image of an organization are consistent with the image of an organization as an organism. There are, of course, many other ways of conceiving of organizations, for example, as theaters..., texts..., and psychic prisons..." (p. 374)
So viewing organizations naturally within a cultural environment makes the organization out to be a kind of organism in a natural environment or culture or alternately it views the organism (aka organization) itself as cultural. Very much a systems viewpoint.
The other methaphors are more interesting, I think. It would be interesting to look at the literature and see how they describe each of these metaphoric perspectives, and maybe eventually I'll do that, but since I don't have easy access to an academic library right now I'm going to take the easy way out and make a point that that might be something to consider looking up in the future if I want to build on this point.
The the organization were viewed as a theater, would the management be the audience? or would they be the playrights and/or stage managers? How far can you take this metaphor anyway? (Sometimes there's a limit as to how far a metaphor can be applied, how many details fit.) Who are the players in the theater? Is it everyone in the organization? Does it include the management? Does it include the formal and informal organization? I'm not sure. And I'm not sure what implications I can draw for the mission in Vienna, so I'm going to move on.
The author deals with each of these later on, but doesn't seem to label them as such. The organization as text probably is not too much of an issue, and if it is I'll deal with it later in the text, but the "psychic prisons" one is definitely a problem. I read ahead and it is pretty much what I think it is, although he uses a bit different wording later on. The Vienna mission definitely used this and I am most definitely against it (in case you didn't know by now). It's the surreptitious changing of individuals' values and norms to fit the mission's ends that may or may not be agreeable to the individual if stated plately and upfront without any messing around, just telling it like it is, just the facts, man, just the facts.
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Before moving on to the next section the author spends some time discussing how some theorists "advance the view that organizations be understood as culture." (p. 347) Meaning that culture is the very nature or essence of organizations. But the author notes 3 branches of anthropology that all take different approaches to culture and hence different approaches to the study of organizations, and it's these three approaches that form the next sections of the article.
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This first article sub-section is "A Cognitive Perspective."
"The task of the anthropologist who follows this perspective is to determine what the rules are, to find out how the members of a culture see and describe their world." (p. 348)
I'm afraid the anthropologist would have had a dickens of a time in the Vienna mission. First of all, just getting through the strict security system would have been a daunting task. Then secondly, once in avoiding getting kicked out by the security system would have been the next daunting task. Seriously, any anthropologist worth their weight in gold would have arranged in advanced to be there and would have arrived to see a lily white organization sanitized just for them. Of course, their keen anthropologist eyes and ears would have sensed something amiss, but they might not have guesses what it was. The other option would have been if they were fortunate enough to have a close friend of relative, or better yet someone they supported, in the mission that they could visit for a while and offer to help and thus become a participant observer. Very clever that one. Yes, it might work. Of course if anyone finds out his/her profession that could be a problem.
Outside of the minor problem of how to actually get the opportunity of getting close enough to the mission to get the requisite information needed to answer these questions, I think their answers would be very interesting indeed. This is what my impression was of how the mission members viewed the world. I think this means the world within the mission. They would probably say they were like a big family, because they were in a lot of ways, spending so much time together, helping each other out. And the socialization process was so gruelling that you ended out feeling like they knew pretty much everything about you and then you trusted each other and it really could be very nice, I think... As long as you were on the good side of the mission, of course.
Although this is a long section, there is really nothing in it that fits my situation, so I'm goint to end here for now and next time we'll pick up with the next approach.
