Cultural Strategies of Organizing
by
Charles Lamson
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Organizational Symbolism and Cultural Strategies of Motivation and Control
Organizational symbolism - metaphors, stories, myths, rituals and ceremonies - have a duel relationship to cultural strategies; they express the assumptions of the culture, and when and when articulated, reproduce those assumptions. Some advocates of the cultural strategy of organizing assume that upper-management can motivate and control employees by using the strategic managing of organizational symbols. Unfortunately, this view seriously oversimplifies the nature of symbolism. Employees are human beings, and humans actively perceive, process and choose to respond to messages in their own often idiosyncratic ways. They interpret stories and other symbolic forms, precisely as they interpret identification messages, in terms of their own needs, experiences, and frames of reference. Different employees, or different subcultures of employees, may interpret the same symbolic act in different was. They also may tell different stories, create their own independent rituals, or describe their organization or unit through the use of different metaphors. Upper management may tell a different story to explain an organizational disaster or (success) than production employees do; employees in a subculture dominated by marketing employees may tell a different story that blames the research and development division for a failed product line; research and development employees may tell the same story in a way that satirizes members of the marketing division. In these cases, organizational symbolism may actually reduce managerial control, and motivate employees to act in ways that are not preferred by management.
Metaphors
These are symbols in which one image is used to describe another one. They are often used to describe an entire organization. Frequent organizational metaphors are military machines (working here is like being in the army), families (these people are my closest friends, my family, or this desk is my home away from home), and games (to survive here, you have to play the game, pretend to be what the big shots want you to be). For fifty years a large West Coast toy manufacturer has been described by its employees as an "army under siege." Although the enemy has changed many times from profit-hungry East Coast companies in the 1950s, to wily foreign importers who keep their workers in poverty, during the 1960s and 1970s; to computer firms that care about wires and chips, not children, in the 1980s, the guiding metaphor has been the same. Employees talk about "fighting the battle," which means constantly working hard to maintain efficiency; "taking no casualties," which means that everyone constantly monitors quality (including a company program, in which samples are donated to employees, if they will take them home and see how long it takes their children to destroy them); "everyone being a spy," which leads most employees to regularly take their children to toy shops, just to see which of their competitors' products are popular and ought to be duplicated; and "foot soldiers in the battle," which involves every employee in the mission of the organization, and justifies a hierarchical, rule-governed style of management. But the most powerful expressions of the metaphor are borrowed from the larger culture: "be all that you can be" is used to justify voluntary overtime, and "lean mean fighting machine" is used to explain reductions in the number of middle managers. Almost every normal work experience is explained in language reflecting the army-under-siege metaphor; almost every behavior desired of workers can be justified by referring to the metaphor. In cases like this one, management and employees share the same metaphorical description of their organization, and define that metaphor in the same way. Motivation and control are enhanced.  Stories and Storytelling Human beings are storytelling animals. From childhood fairy tales; to the tales told during executives weekend retreats, stories provide concrete and vivid images, of what is or will be like, and what behaviors our culture values or prohibits. Stories present events in sequence, rather than in a list or chart, which makes some events seem to be the causes or effects of other events. At least in Western culture, stories are based on a dramatic conflict between a protagonist and an antagonist. Stories are relevant to the needs and experiences of members of the organization. Stories are told most often, and are most powerful when people are confused and concerned about what is going on in their organization (for instance, when a person is entering a new organization, or when the organization is undergoing major changes). They provide explanations of events, policies, procedures, and so on, that are beyond doubt or argument. They function as social myths, not in the sense that they are untrue (although they may be), but in the sense that their "truths" are taken for granted by the people who tell and listen to them. The power of myths, like that of stories stems from their coherence, their ability to help people make sense of their surroundings and their consistency, with other organizational stories and myths 
Rituals and ceremonies A final form of organizational symbolism involves rituals and ceremonies. Like storytelling, these gain their power from the act of participating in them, as well as from the meaning that people extract from them. Because the meaning of rituals and ceremonies is located in the doing, they can be especially powerful symbolic acts. Rituals are informal celebrations that may or may not be officially sanctioned by the organization, and ceremonies, are planned, formal and ordained by management. when a work crew gets together at a local bar on Friday evenings, it is a ritual - an informal gathering. When all the employees of a department store are asked to appear at a media event designed to kick off a new line of clothes, it is a ceremony. Participating in rituals and ceremonies helps individual employees understand the political and interpersonal nuances of their organization. If they perceive that the ritual or ceremony is meaningful, participating may increase their commitment to the organization, because it makes them feel they are a part of the organizational community.
*SOURCE: STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY 6TH EDITION BY CHARLES CONRAD AND MARSHALL SCOTT POOL; PAGES 163-166*
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