The culture perspective on organizations: Instrumental values and basic features of culture

This article presents a meta-theoretical perspective on current studies of organizational culture. The aim is to promote reflection about the issues and aspects that are being investigated, and even more those that are being neglected. The paper identifies and criticizes a preoccupation with aspects of culture that are particularly interesting in an instrumental context. A pragmatic perspective dominates organizational culture research, and this tends to lead to an impoverished conceptualization of culture. The potentially rich cultural approach is often reduced and trivialized in order to fit into the "tool" view which guides many management studies. Related to this limited use of the culture concept is a tendency for management students to become trapped by the unquestioned assumptions of Western managerial culture without being able to investigate these for themselves. This article suggests some ways in which scholars could perhaps cope with the problem of cultural blindness.