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- Title
Structuring Culture for Change: Strategy, Participation, and Collective Purpose in a Japanese Factory.
- Authors
Turner, Christena
- Abstract
Organizational culture in Japanese firms has often been used as an independent variable to explain both economic success and, more recently, economic troubles. The Japanese work ethic and lifetime employment stand in for culture in the former case and Japanese reliance on rigid traditions and hierarchy stand in for culture in the latter. This article examines a Japanese factory campaign designed to prepare for recent and ongoing challenges to employment practices and business strategies by “strengthening culture” and “creating new values.” Factory managers worked to create support for their goals in face of department, section, and worker responses ranging from enthusiasm to apathy or opposition. An analysis of this campaign shows that culture is a social process, not a given body of knowledge and practice. It also shows how that process is carried out within a particular economic institution by particular actors.
- Subjects
JAPAN; CORPORATE culture; FACTORIES; EVERYDAY life; ETHNOLOGY; EMPLOYMENT
- Publication
Qualitative Sociology, 1999, Vol 22, Issue 3, p199
- ISSN
0162-0436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1023/A:1022953704622