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Organizational Culture as Societal Culture: A Multi-Paradigmatic Look
Kavous Ardalan
Marist College, U.S.A.
Volume 10: 2017, pp. 97-126; ABSTRACT
Most organizational behavior textbooks correctly state that organizational cultures are similar to cultures of different countries. Then, they provide a very brief and general definition of culture and extensively discuss organizational culture. The purpose of this paper is to provide a relatively substantive discussion of culture so that students would have a more comprehensive understanding of culture before they read about organizational culture. The premise of this paper is that culture can be explained in different ways, that each explanation of culture is based on a worldview, and that each worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This paper discusses culture from the four different paradigmatic viewpoints in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of culture.
