Understanding Organisational Culture as a Trait Theory

Abstract

This paper aims at an organisational culture theory redefining existing concepts of organisational or corporate culture dimensions. It does this by embracing a new concept of organisational culture that fits with thematic classes of organisation theory. Knowledge cybernetics will be used to show the interconnections (interaction processes) between thematic fields of organisation theory following Hatch and Cunliffe (2006). Its perspective is that social collectives have collective minds that can be explored in terms of their social psychological processes, and personalities. In concert with Bandura's concept of collective agency, that of normative personality is integrated into organisational context and Piaget's notions of how the mind operates are applied to the organisation. Organisational culture manifests itself by different emphasis given to different types of the interconnections interactions between the organisation and its environments and different emphasis on different types of information and knowledge flows within the organisation. The paper offers a theoretical construct exploring organisational culture from the perspective of thematic fields of organisation theory. It requires further elaboration and development of a questionnaire to be tested in different contexts and samples. It has the capacity to provide pragmatic meaning in case studies and may contribute to identification of dysfunctions of information and knowledge management in organisations. This is the first approach to take a view from the thematic fields of organisation theory on research into organisational culture by applying knowledge cybernetics.