Understanding Organizational Culture: A Perspective on Roles for Leaders

Abstract

The influence of organizational leaders on the evolution and maintenance of organizational culture has been accepted as a fact in organizational life. The roles and challenges of organizational leaders are contingent upon the way organizational culture is conceived. In the traditional rational perspective, organizational culture is treated as an “instrument” or “function” that can and should be manipulated by leaders to help organizations adapt to the external environmental realities. In the symbolic-interpretive perspective, organizational culture is viewed as a “social phenomenon.” Consequently, the roles and challenges of leaders become significantly different from the traditionalrational perspective. In this paper, the authors have discussed the symbolic-interpretive perspective, with a focus OB semiotic analysis, to understand organization and organizational culture. The authors have argued that organizational symbols, rituals, and stories are too critical to be marginalized or ignored. The authors have proposed three roles of organizational leaders from the symbolic-interpretive perspective: as symbols, as the central characters in organizational stories, and as managers of symbols and rituals.