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Human Relations
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Culture and Conformity: An Essay on Individual Adaptation in Centralized Bureaucracy

Steven P. Feldman

Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University

The cultural aspects of organizations have been mostly overlooked in the study of management. This is particularly important because the Protestant ethic which organized the sociopsychological matrix for the industrial revolution no longer commands enough authority to continue organizing individual motivation and societal needs. Thus, local solutions have evolved to deal with cultural ambiguity and they have evolved with little thought as to their implications. In this essay, the cultural aspects of interpersonal relations in a telephone company are analyzed. This analysis was carried out during a year long full-time fieldwork period which employed participant observation, structured and semi-structured interviews, and document analysis for data collection purposes. Strong demands for conformity were found to dominate interpersonal relations. Three types of response to these demands were discovered: acceptance based on conscious suppression of personal interests, acceptance based on unconscious distortion, and secret rejection. These mechanisms for dealing with strong demands for conformity were found to affect managerial development, interpersonal communications, and organizational adaptability. Given these kinds of superior-subordinate relations, it was anticipated that the Bell System will have great difficulty adapting to a competitive marketplace.

Human Relations, Vol. 38, No. 4, 341-356 (1985)
DOI: 10.1177/001872678503800404
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