Organizational Ideology Research Articles

An Analysis of the Social Meanings of Conflict in Nonprofit Organizations

This ethnographic study illustrates how staff and management’s sensemaking in conflict in a clerical unit in a Scandinavian nonprofit organization is shaped by institutionalized meanings. Staff and management draw on three institutionalized frameworks when making sense of conflict: The defective personality framework, the diversity framework, and the status inequality framework. Similarly to the organization’s practice of framing “conflicts” as “frictions,” the diversity framework is guided by organizational ideology of egalitarianism and similar to the defective personality framework it emphasises nonconfrontation as a main strategy in processes of conflict management. Despite the organization’s strong commitment to egalitarianism, the clerical workers view status inequality as the origin of many conflicts and they thereby draw from the same institutionalized meanings of political economy of distributional conflicts that the organization was founded to change. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Extension in the Subjectifying Power of Marketing Ideology in Organizations

In this article, we analyze the managerialistic ideology of marketing theory by focusing on “customerism”—the customer-oriented managerialism that characterizes marketing. As an ideology, customerism has made it possible for marketing to discursively compete with different management fields in directing the management of organizational members. We base our notion of managerialism in Foucauldian works on power and make a distinction between three forms of power/managerialism: sovereign, disciplinary, and pastoral. Our analysis displays how the forms of power underpinning the customeristic ideology inherent to marketing theory have changed over time, thereby contributing to the reproduction and extension of that ideology. In particular, we show how different articulations of marketing discourse have developed the managerialism of marketing in such a way that today (1) organizational members around the world are meant to be affected by it and (2) it is meant to affect these organizational members in a deeper way.

Religious Ideology and Lethality - Does Religious Sect Have an Effect on the Lethality of a Terrorist Organization?

There is a gap in research focusing on religious ideology and lethality of a terrorist organization. Determining the ideology of a group is problematic, as many terrorist groups have overlapping ideologies. This paper is a case study analysis of two lethal organizations that base their actions and decisions clearly on religious grounds. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization following Shi’a Islam and al Qaeda declares Sunni ideology. Both organizations have an Islamic ideology with important and significant divergences that need to be understood for effective counter terrorism strategies. Ideology plays a critical role in constructing a world view of the members of the terrorist organizations but as seen in both the case studies i.e. Hezbollah and al Qaeda, ideology is not a stagnant or dormant point of reference, but rather it is constantly developing and evolving.

School district labour conflict and frame analysis: a field study of contentious negotiations

Labour conflict in school districts is a largely neglected area of educational research. This study examines the perceptions, actions, and decisions of union and district leaders using social movement theory to describe, analyze, and interpret contentious contract negotiations in three school districts in the Pacific Northwest region of the US. Research Methods: Having failed to arrive at a contract settlement mid-August prior to the beginning of the 2006–2007 school year, union and district leaders were approached and invited to participate in the study. Twenty-seven semi-formal interviews as well as observations of meetings and events, and artifacts were gathered for analysis. Findings: The article discusses key issues relevant to the ways union and district personnel perceived, spoke to, and engaged in labour conflict. Five action frames labeled craftsmanship, stewardship, competition, solidarity, and diplomacy were identified. The frames expose organizational logics and ideologies that appeared to guide how participants planned, managed, and communicated with each other and their constituents. The study illustrates and provides insights for interpreting, communicating, and structuring beliefs, actions, and events for both district and union leaders.

Study Case for Determination of Organizational Culture in a State Organization

This paper presents a study on identifying the type of existing and desired organizational culture, in a state organization. For writing this paper, the strategy adopted was the study case. For data collection and analysis were used qualitative research techniques and specific tools such as: analysis and documents, interviews with company employee, questionnaire and direct observation. Harrison's organizational ideology questionnaire was used to identify the type of organizational culture. The existing culture is the role-type culture and the desired culture is the success-type culture. Between the two types of organizational culture is a large gap.

El paisaje en la distribución de los túmulos funerarios del valle de Azapa, durante el periodo formativo, norte de Chile

The survey records of the Azapa Valley (UTM coordinates (datum WGS84) 795.600 E y 19.362.000 N; 795.000 E y 19.378.000 N), located in the North of Chile, present a settlement pattern of burial mound complexes distributed along the valley's terraces and hill skirts near runoffs and wetlands during the Formative period. Because of this, we suggest that an ideological organization of incipient farmers existed, which was related with the burial rituals and the offering deposits made in the mound construction in the desert landscape. The burial mounds were visible from different sectors of the valley, built in huaca trails up to the Indigenous-Hispanic contact period. This research is based on an extensive and intensive prospection, with the purpose of determining the burial mounds location, defining the distance between the mounds and water resources, measuring the occupation history of the mound complex area, and determining the visibility degree between the different mound sectors. The discussion of these objectives has provided interesting information, which we will be analyzed with the new Landscape Archaeology theories.

Witch-Hunting at Crucible University: The Power and Peril of Competing Organizational Ideologies

Witch-Hunting at Crucible University: The Power and Peril of Competing Organizational Ideologies

Rethinking Coaching – Critical Theory and the Economic Crisis

Rethinking Coaching offers a spirited challenge to the paradigms that have of late dominated organizational life, most notably in the banking sector. The vehicle the authors propose as being best suited to encourage a comprehensive reassessment of the ideologies that have brought about the credit crunch is coaching. They set out a more radical approach to the practice based on scepticism, particularly as it has been developed from the later twentieth century onwards by key postmodern critical theorists. One of the reasons organizational ideologies go uncontested is that critics of destructive group-think are often suppressed and silenced. Overall, this book aims to show how coaching can widen its intellectual range such that it can become a progressively more effective technique within organizational life resisting group-think: a positive force for preventing crises of the kind that have caused such havoc in contemporary economic and political life, on a truly international scale.

Master or Comrade: Empowerment Theories and Applications in Parent Organizations of LAUSD

Within the service area of the Los Angeles Unified School District, dozens of parent organizations operate, utilizing compelling words like empower, transformation and revolution throughout their mission statements in a district that is facing increasing dropout rates and decreasing college preparatory programs according to the California Department of Education. Central to the research is the understanding that the leadership models employed by the parent organizations directly impacts the parents’ involvement and effectiveness of the organization. This research applies the empowerment and social justice evaluation theories of Freire, Martens, and Gramsci to examine the alignment between the ideology and practice of the parent organizations that serve largely African-American and Latino populations to determine why participation in these organizations has not resulted in the large scale transformation in the public school system sought by the engaged members. The methodologies used include case studies and data analysis of two prominent South Los Angeles organizations examining the materials, websites, organizational transparency and community resources to determine the roles of minority parents in the leadership, democratic principles and equity within the organizations.

Dopo l'Unitŕ. Forme e ambivalenze del legittimismo borbonico

From their exile in Rome, following Italian unification, the Bourbons tried to promote a political protest against the Piedmontese government in the southern provinces of the kingdom of Italy. The best known aspect of this protest was the so-called brigantaggio (brigandage) in the countryside, particularly in the years immediately following unification. But the party was also at work in the towns, at least until the middle of the 1860s. Based on archival sources, the article investigates the political ideology and patterns of organization of Bourbon propaganda in exile.

Witch-Hunting at Crucible University: The Power and Peril of Competing Organizational Ideologies

The literature on organizational culture underscores the benefits of a strong culture—its capacity to draw people together through shared values and norms. Yet, the formation of a powerful ideology also has the capacity to promote divisiveness and to alienate those who fail to conform. This study employs Frank W. Lutz’s witch-hunting framework in order to examine an institutional crisis at a small private faith-based institution. The case provides a rich illustration of the potential dangers of divisive ideologies on campus.

Collapse of communism, crisis of capitalism, and the state of humanity

This article argues the main following points. (1) Communism was fatefully dependent upon the action or inaction of its top leaders because of the vulnerability of the hyper-centralized power and hyper-centralized defense of the ruling class and the ruling party. No one was really able to seriously predict the historical contingencies such as Gorbachev and Yeltsin that played a decisive role. The most that social scientists and analysts could safely claim was that communism had become unsuccessful and problematical to such an extent that force alone could maintain it. However, given the overall history of communism, who could have anticipated that such force would not be used. (2) The United States is toiling now in an overwhelmingly difficult and dangerous transition, not only from a ‘superpower’ to ‘merely’ a big power, but from a totalistic and laissez-faire capitalism to a limited and state-regulated capitalism. It is the most efficacious way of production and primary distribution. However, unless capitalism, national and global, becomes regulated and combined with some kind of socialism (solidarism) that is yet to be established, global crises will keep recurring. The best chance for enlightened socialist (solidaristic) humanism lies in secondary distribution based on equality and justice as its fundamental principles. (3) The very term ‘superpower’ suggests a kind of superhuman, almost divine power. The United States does not have such power because (among other things) apocalyptic weapons are at the disposal of some considerably weaker states (in every other respect). (4) The possibility of the self-destruction of humankind has become the over-determination of all other over-determinations in history. It follows that auto-apocalypse must be separated from the categorical and epochal dichotomy between modernity/ modernism and postmodernity/postmodernism and given an absolute priority, both theoretical and practical. This break should be characterized as post-postmodernity and reflection upon it as post-postmodernism. We are in vital need of a total anti-apocalyptic turnaround in overall thought, sensitivity, activity and organization. Unfortunately, it can now safely be predicted that more and more states and societies, even those founded on (internal) freedoms and desirous to maintain them, will become transformed into states and societies focused on the struggle for survival in the face of auto-apocalyptic threats. I believe that confronted more and more with such threats liberalism will actually, and later probably also explicitly, yield the place of the fundamental operative (unlike declarative) view of the world, ideology, imagology, and principle of social organization — to humankind existentialism. We have entered an existentialist ‘end of history’ instead of the proclaimed liberalistic ‘end of history’.

Identificação ou resistência? uma análise da constituição subjetiva do policial

O presente trabalho objetiva discutir aspectos da construção da subjetividade de policiais. Para tanto investigam-se as temáticas da ideologia nas organizações e da formação da identidade profissional. Pretende-se compreender como estes elementos se relacionam na esfera da subjetividade do indivíduo, ocasionando a sua socialização e a consequente adesão ao discurso organizacional. Dessa forma, lançam-se os olhares sobre as questões referentes aos impactos na interioridade do trabalhador das estratégias de controle da subjetividade implícitas na gestão das organizações. Trata-se de uma proposta de pesquisa de natureza qualitativa, na qual, a partir da análise de conteúdo das histórias de vida narradas pelos policiais entrevistados, se procurou compreender a contribuição que os contatos estabelecidos na organização exercem sobre a construção identitária destes. Evidenciam-se algumas das perspectivas que circundam as práticas organizacionais, à procura da conquista do imaginário do trabalhador, bem como as táticas dos trabalhadores à procura da sobrevivência na organização. Em meio a esta relação em busca da dominação, encontra-se a visão de mundo compartilhada pela organização, ora incorporada, ora rejeitada, ora subvertida, em conformidade com a efetiva e particular submersão do indivíduo na organização.

Innovation and Adaptation in Contemporary Left-Wing Parties: Lessons from Southern Europe

Left-wing parties in contemporary democracies have to face huge organizational and competitive dilemmas. This article aims at examining party change and adaptation of left-wing parties by focusing on Southern European countries. By re-examining three key areas of party change – the linkage between parties and civil society, the ideological and programmatic dimension and party organization – this research contributes to understand the trajectory and the characteristics of contemporary left-wing parties. Although there is an increasing convergence with regard to the three dimensions, left-wing parties in new democracies are able to respond to more flexibly to external challenges compared to the main Italian left-wing party. This process shows that left-wing parties are adopting a model based on personalized leadership, moderate stances and flexible roots with regard to civil society. The different outcome of these responses is a central element for explaining the institutional and governmental performances. Yet this study argues that the success is inevitably fragile because of the erosion of stable partisan links between left-wing parties and the electorate.

Power and resistance in a multinational organization: Discursive struggles over organizational restructuring

Summary Restructuring organizations are sites of discursive struggles where different organizational groups drawing on various discourses compete to shape the social reality of the organization for their own benefit. This study focuses on the temporal development of resistance and discursive struggles following a unit shutdown decision and the broader restructuring plan of a global industrial organization. The paper reports how the discourse of globalization and discourse of local capitalism were employed to justify and challenge the restructuring plans. I argue, that although resisting organizational groups are rarely able to reverse restructuring decisions, resistance contributes to the evolution of shared organizational discourse themes, employed discursive resources, identity construction, and the formation of organizational ideology. Through these means, resistance has an important role in developing organizational discourses towards mutual understanding and, at the organizational level, finding ways to confront the discourse of globalization.

Os GESTORES NA ORGANIZAÇÃO DO CAPITALISMO BRASILEIRO (1930-1945)

The article presents a historiographical reflexion about the action of the Managers in the ideological organization in national bases of Brazilian capitalism in the period 1930-1945. KEY WORDS: intellectuals, managers, Gois Monteiro, Azevedo Amaral, Brazilian capitalism.

BASIC ASPECTS OF THE POLITICAL IDEOLOGY OF THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT „NEW GENERATION”

The subject of the article – the religious organization “New Generation” – is discussed as a new religious movement, and in the aspect of sociology of religion is to be typologically interpreted as a Christian neo-charismatic evangelical movement having formed as a result of cleavage. Attention is focused on the ways of political collaboration of the movement “New Generation” and the fundamental aspects of its political ideology. The choice of the study subject is grounded on the lengthy and active activity of the group in the territory of Latvia, its topicality, popularity and dynamic growth in the material as well as in the social and political aspects. It is proved by several indicators of social attention and identification – the number of publications in press, intensity of thematic discussions and forums on the Internet, publicity measures, TV broadcasts, political and public activities. The aim of the paper is to identify the main aspects of the political ideology of the religious organization “New Generation” by analyzing the available sources. In order to clear up these aspects, it is necessary to view the courses of activity of the religious organization and its activities in the spheres of civil, public and political participation. As the reference objects, mass media materials have been used as well as periodicals featuring the discourse of the organization (interviews with the organization leaders). As the primary source, the book New World Order by Alexey Ledyaev, the founder and main leader of „New Generation”, has been used in which he voices the main postulates of his revelation as well as the political guidelines for the future development of the system of administration of the world and of Latvia. The book of A. Ledyaev is to be judged as the quintessence of the political ideology of „New Generation” following which the social life in the congregation of this movement has been formed and ensured and which determines the degree of political participation and content of the movement adherents. The following hypothesis is brought forward in the study – the elements and aspects forming the political ideology and the system of world-outlook and values of the religious movement “New Generation” clearly indicate a representation of the ideology of the Christian reconstructionism and its adaptation to the context and political situation of Latvia. Factors like the social agents involved in the formation of communication networks, the rhetoric of expression used in the construction of the space for discourse, the content of ideas reflected in the narratives applied in the context of the organization, models of development planning of the strategic policy and political slogans allow identification of “New Generation” as a religious movement oriented to Christian fundamentalism, which construct its political ideology using the political technologies and action models of the rightist Christians. The political ideology realized by the organization contains features of Christian reconstructionism – political programmes and strategies. On this score, „New Generation” belongs to those Christian fundamentalist organizations that practise a radical and clearly targeted policy.

Contributions and Challenges of Addressing Discursive Racism in the Canadian Media

Over the last three decades, our research has largely focused on the social systems that contribute to and reinforce racism in Canadian society. The media are among the most powerful of these many institutions, as they help transmit its central cultural images, ideas, and symbols as well as a nation’s narratives and myths. Media discourse plays a large role in reproducing the collective belief system of the dominant White society and the core values of this society. Using discourse analysis as a central tool, we have analyzed how social power, dominance, and inequality are produced and resisted through text and talk. The coverage of issues affecting racialized minorities is filtered through the stereotypes, misconceptions, and erroneous assumptions of a largely White-dominated group of media institutions. The media’s images reinforce cultural racism and White hegemony. Our approach identifies a constant and fundamental tension between the everyday experiences of racialized and indigenous people and the perceptions of publishers, editors, journalists, producers, broadcasters, and other media personnel, who have the power to redefine that reality. Over the years, we have continued to document the ways in which racism as ideology, policy, and praxis functions in media organizations. In all of our research and writing, we note how so-called liberal ideologies carry very different meanings, connotations, and consequences. We believe that notions of tolerance, accommodation, equality, fairness, and freedom of expression—central concepts in liberal media discourse—have immensely flexible meanings. Our work has been influenced by many scholars of discourse analysis, such as Teun van Dijk, Michel Foucault, and Stuart Hall. The framework we share is the belief that racialized discourse advances the interests of White hegemony and has an identifiable repertoire of ideas, words, images, and practices through which racism is advanced.

When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation

Leadership targeting has become a key feature of current counterterrorism policies. Both academics and policy makers have argued that the removal of leaders is an effective strategy in combating terrorism. However, leadership decapitation is not always successful, and existing empirical work is insufficient to account for this variability. As a result, this project answers three primary questions: (1) Under what conditions does leadership decapitation result in the dissolution of a terrorist organization?; (2) Does leadership decapitation increase the likelihood of organizational collapse beyond the baseline rate of collapse for groups over time?; and (3) In cases where decapitation does not result in group collapse, to what extent does it result in organizational degradation and hinder a group's ability to carry about terrorist attacks? I develop a dataset of 298 incidents of leadership targeting from 1945–2004 in order to determine whether and when decapitation is effective. First, I identify the conditions under which decapitation has been successful in bringing about organizational decline. The data show that a group's age, size, and type are critical in identifying when decapitation will cause the cessation of terrorist activity. As an organization grows in size and age, it is much more likely to withstand the removal of its leadership. Organizational type is also significant in understanding the susceptibility of an organization to decapitation. Ideological organizations are most likely to experience a cessation of activity following the removal of leader, while religious organizations are highly resistant to leadership decapitation. Second, I determine whether decapitation is an effective counterterrorism strategy that results in organizational collapse. The data show that decapitation does not increase the likelihood of organizational collapse beyond a baseline rate of collapse for groups over time. Organizations that have not had their leaders removed are more likely to fall apart than those that have undergone a loss of leadership. The marginal utility of decapitation is negative for many groups, particularly for larger, older, religious, and separatist organizations. Finally, I look at the extent to which decapitation results in organizational degradation and hinders a group's ability to carry about terrorist attacks. Case studies illustrate whether decapitation has an effect on the operational capacity of an organization by identifying whether the removal of key leaders changes the number and lethality of attacks. If certain organizations are more resilient than others, it is important to know when decapitation should be effective and when it could lead to counterproductive outcomes. Overall, these findings illustrate the need to develop a new model for evaluating the efficacy of leadership decapitation and for developing effective counterterrorism policies.

Value Preferences and Ideological Structuring of Attitudes in American Public Opinion

In this study, we investigate four attitudinal structures (including liberal, conservative, and libertarian configurations) associated with two ideological dimensions among American voters and demonstrate that these attitudinal structures are related in expected ways to differential preferences for the values of freedom, order, and equality/caring. Liberals are inclined to trade freedom for equality/caring but not for order, whereas conservatives are their opposites—willing to trade freedom for order but not for equality/caring. In contrast, libertarians are generally less willing than others to trade freedom for either order or equality/caring (although they probably prefer order to equality/caring). The fourth ideological type is more willing than the others to relinquish freedom, preferring both order and equality/caring. Depending on how our results are interpreted, this fourth type may be characterized as either communitarian or humanitarian. These findings help close the gap between unidimensional conceptions and multidimensional evidence of ideological organization in political attitudes by demonstrating that value structure and attitudinal structure are strongly related in two ideological dimensions.