Reviving Organizational Culture with the Concept of Tradition: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Abstract

Organizational culture was the darling of Organization Theory and management fads in the 1980s and 1990s. To managers it promised a way to motivate and to increase organizational effectiveness with little investment. And to scholars it represented a more human and anthropological way of framing organizations as bearers of shared meanings, rituals, symbols, ceremonies, and stories. However, over time, top-down corporate approaches to culture change were not reaping the promised benefits and its usefulness to scholars began to wane as they exhausted its theoretical implications and discovered a dark side to culture change programs. We believe that this weakening of culture’s importance to organizations and to scholars is partly due to its neglect of the role of tradition in organizations. Tradition represents an informal means by which not only ceremonies, rituals, symbols, etc. may be passed on over time, but more importantly many traditions embody how the work itself is to be performed and evaluated. Therefore, this paper will explore formative works on the concept of tradition and also draw upon social psychological perspectives (namely Symbolic Interactionism (SI)) to theorize why the concept of tradition needs to be added to, and perhaps revive, the literature on organizational culture. This paper explores this theme and its implications for theory, management, and practice.