ORGANIZATION THEORY - Essay Example

Edgar H. Schein’s article basically looks into the possibility of coming up with a viable definition for the term “organizational culture.” He has approached the endeavor from the symbolic-interpretive perspective and he has utilized the metaphor of culture as he tries to define and understand “organizational culture.” I have classified his work under symbolic-interpretive perspective because one can read from his work the pervading idea that it is persons themselves who have negotiated and created the symbols and have provided the meanings of the symbols that they themselves are using in organizations.

And this “empowerment” is clearly manifested by these people when they work from the same underlying assumptions, hold onto similar values and norms, affirmed and accepted behavior patterns and other similar signs. As such, Schein is operating from the metaphor of culture. Not because he is to define culture, but because he presents the ideation that organization behaves or acts in a particular manner because it is the “pattern of meaning created and maintained by human association itself” (Hatch, 1998, p52) Edgar Schein’s (1988) article “Defining Organizational Culture,” presented the notion that the term culture “has different implications and meanings” (p.371). However, the moment that you attached it to the concept of organization one has more or less limited its application to the notion that one is to deal with a particular group in society.

And it is in this context he claims that culture though ambiguous, can be appreciated as the coming together of concepts on the basis that is commonly shared by the players creating basic assumptions that becomes the foundation of values, norms, behaviors and traditions. In trying to come up with a working definition for “organizational culture”, Schein has taken us back to the important dynamic roles and functions that human beings play and perform in the organization. Some