組織文化研究之回顧與前瞻

The Nature of Organizational Culture: A Critical Review

自從Pondy與Mitroff（1979）提出文化的組織研究模式後，組織文化成為組織管理與企管實務的主流語言。藉由組織的文化隱喻，可提供組織生活秩序，以型態化方式來解釋成員的生活經驗，為組織研究提供社會歷史脈絡，提升組織分析的豐富性與清晰性。本文藉由文獻回顧，首先審視組織文化的定義與功能，並提出文化水蓮圖作為文化層級研究的統整架構。接著再從文化與組織的關係，解析文化作為組織的社會文化系統或意念系統差異，來闡明組織文化研究旨趣、研究典範與研究取向的不同，進而導引出比較管理、組織文化、組織認知、組織象徵及潛意識過程等五大文化研究主題。其後則探討組織文化的動態特性，以文化的生成、傳承、與變革三階段說明之。最後，本文提出組織文化研究在多重文化觀、主位研究、文化效能及研究方法等四個思考面，期望藉由本文的回顧與省思，進一步剖析組織文化的研究概念，以作為後續研究之基礎。

The concept of organizational culture has received increasing attention both from academics and practitioners since Pondy and Mitroff published their “Beyond Open System of Organization” in 1979. Culture provides a metaphor for the automatic patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, and the meaning and ordering of organizational life. The study of organizational culture could build the entire analysis of organization around systems theory, and achieve a richer understanding of organizational phenomena. The purpose of this paper is four-fold: first, to present a water-lily diagram to decipher the content and meaning of organizational culture in the organization and management field; second, to present frameworks for analyzing the organizational culture literature based on research interests, paradigms, and approaches. Five themes emerged from the intersection of literature, including comparative management, corporate culture, organizational cognition, organizational symbolism, and unconscious processes; third, to propose a dynamic concept of culture change based on the process of culture creation, preservation, and evolution; and finally, to pull together the insights and findings from this inquiry in order to propose a research perspective on organizational culture for future studies.