Symbolic Power and Organizational Culture

Bibliographic Data

ID2248367
AuthorsTim Hallett (0000-0001-6839-5465, Indiana University, corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume21
Issue2
Pages128-149
Publication date2003-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0735-2751 • E-ISSN: 1467-9558
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1111/1467-9558.00181
OpenAlexW2079622963
LanguageEN
Citations received87
References cited76

With the recent wave of corporate scandals, organizational culture has regained relevance in politics and the media. However, to acquire enduring utility, the concept needs an overhaul to overcome the weaknesses of earlier approaches. As such, this paper reconceptualizes organizational culture as a negotiated order (Strauss 1978) that emerges through interactions between participants, an order influenced by those with the symbolic power to define the situation. I stress the complementary contributions of theorists of practice (Bourdieu and Swidler) and theorists of interaction (Goffman and Strauss), building upward from practice into interaction, symbolic power, and the negotiated order. Using data from initial reports on the fall of Arthur Andersen and Co., I compare this symbolic power approach to other approaches (culture as subjective beliefs and values or as context/public meaning). The symbolic power model has five virtues: an empirically observable object of study; the capacity to explain conflict and integration; the ability to explain stability and change; causal efficacy; and links between the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels of analysis. Though this paper focuses on organizational culture, the symbolic power model provides theoretical leverage for understanding many situated contexts

Leverage (statistics · Sociology of culture · Symbolic interactionism · Symbolic power · The Symbolic · Management and Organizational Studies · Management Theory and Practice · Social and Cultural Dynamics