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JOCM
14,6 Critical theory and the
hegemony of corporate culture
John O. Ogbor
590 Texas Southern University, Jesse H. Jones School of Business, Houston,
Texas, USA
Received December 1999
Revised May 2000 Keywords Corporate culture, Equal opportunities, Empowerment, Organizational change
Accepted July 2000 Abstract Based on critical theory and dialectical thought, discusses and outlines a framework
for understanding corporate culture as corporate hegemony. First, offers the relevance of critical
theory to the study of corporate culture as a managerial praxis and organizational discourse.
Second, examines three aspects of the dialectics of corporate culture: the dialectical tensions
between corporate and individual identity; the conflicting pressure for uniformity and diversity;
and the dialectics of empowerment and disempowerment. Third, discusses the mechanisms for
the hegemonic perpetuation of corporate culture by researchers and practitioners and for
resisting a critical stance in the discourse of corporate culture. Fourth, and finally, the article
examines possible ways for overcoming the problem of cultural hegemony in organization theory
and praxis.

Critical theory and the study of corporate culture

Journal of Organizational Change
Management, Vol. 14 No. 6, 2001,
pp. 590-608. # MCB University
Press, 0953-4814
Critical theory is used here to refer to the collective philosophy/social theory of
members of the Frankfurt School ± mainly Horkheimer and Adorno (1947),
Marcuse (1964) ± as well as the more recent work of Habermas (1972, 1973). The
basic premise of critical theory is the promotion of human enlightenment and
emancipation by offering a form of knowledge that is multidimensional.
Advocates of critical theory see social practices and discourses, including
organizational and managerial, as mirroring Western traditional ways of
social-political domination of ``others''. Critical theorists are concerned with
what Tarnas (1993, p. 400) terms as the ``Western mind's overriding
compulsion to impose some form of totalizing reason on every aspects of life.''
The unilinear discursive praxis that has characterized Western thought is seen
as alienating and repressing the voices of ``others''; hence this pattern of
thought is ``self-deceptive and destructive'' (Tarnas, 1993). Consequently, the
aim of critical theory is to produce a particular form of knowledge ``that seeks to
realize an emancipatory interest, specifically through a critique of
consciousness and ideology'' (Carr, 2000, p. 208).
By challenging the premises upon which contemporary ideology and
practices are based, critical theory helps us ``to explore and articulate ways in
which conditions of social, economic, and political domination limit, distort and
depreciate discourse regarding contested public issues'' (McClure, 1996, p. 488).
Hence, critical theorists in the Marcusian tradition have shown that social
discourses (such as corporate culture), operating the way they do, are capable
of producing a one-dimensional society where thought and existing
alternatives are reduced to a unilinear dimension ± producing ``one-dimensional
man''. In this one-dimensional society, existing alternatives are those defined
and presented by those who exercise control over instruments of social Critical theory
domination. Thus the critically-minded researcher is aware of how politically and hegemony of
correct ideas and practices serve as a tapestry for unexamined alternatives, corporate culture
because social theory functions as a validity claim legitimizing a group's
pretext to dominance (Rosen, 1984). This present article sees corporate culture
as a discursive practice that legitimates a group's claim to power.
On a more general societal level, critical theory, according to Marcuse (1964, 591
p. 227), ``strives to define the irrational character of the established rationality
and to define the tendencies which cause this rationality to generate its own
transformation.'' In this way, critical theory serves the important purpose of
effecting change in societies, including its institutions, by the very dissociation
of itself from the material practice as defined by the established order.
From the discipline of organization theory and management, research has
benefited enormously from the import of critical theory. For instance, earlier
studies have shown that management and organization theory and method are
linked to the social structure of bureaucracy and the capitalist mode of
production in which it is embedded (Rosen, 1984). More recent studies by
Alvesson (1991), Alvesson and Deetz (1999), Carr (2000), Deetz (1992), Ogbor
(2000), Willmott (1993), and others, have analyzed managerial and
organizational practices and theory from the perspective of critical theory. The
contribution of these studies is, among other things, the examination and
exposition of situations of domination and repression. Thus, the promotion of
emancipation and freedom from managerial and administrative means of
employee domination and repression is central to a critical analysis of
organizational practices. The organizational and management significance of
critical theory is brilliantly stated in Alvesson and Deetz (1999, p. 192) in the
following terms:
The central goal of critical theory in organizational studies has been to create societies and
workplaces which are free from domination, where all members have an equal opportunity to
contribute to the production of systems which meet human needs and lead to the progressive
development of all.

Stripped of critical perspective, corporate culture lends a dignified complexion

to managerial control and a whole-hearted acceptance of the means through
which employees in an organization are repressed. Corporate culture, if
uncritically examined, remains an ideology, which is socially constructed to
reflect and legitimize the power relations of managerial eÂlites within an
organization and society at large (Alvesson, 1991; Kersten, 2000; Willmott,
1993). Critical theory helps in exposing situations of domination,
disempowerment, and undemocratic practices associated with corporate
culture in the management of organizations. In the tradition of critical theory,
we see corporate culture as an instrument for the universalization of
managerial interests, the suppression of conflicting interests and the
perpetuation of corporate and societal hegemony. A number of studies,
working primarily from an ideology-critique perspective, have shown how
managerial practices serve as an instrument for ideological control in
JOCM organizations and how positivistic researchers provide the aura of science and
14,6 legitimacy to support the use of managerial domination techniques (Alvesson
and Deetz, 1999; Kersten, 2000; Rosen, 1984). As is pointed out in Rusaw (2000,
p. 249-50), ``domination is rooted in an organizational ideology''. This ideology,
expressed in the culture of the organization, is ``a systematic set of norms,
beliefs, and attitudes that people accept unquestionably as guides for everyday
592 thinking and behavior''. If we cling to the idea that freedom for all is a necessity
in a democratic society, critical analysis is crucial, as it offers ways of
emancipation from instruments of domination not only in the workplace but
also in society in general.
One important way of bringing about change in organizations is to see
organization actions in terms of dialectical relationships, namely, as the
product of tensions between opposites. Thus, as in critical theory, dialectical
theory eschews a unidirectional causation of social actions and sees social
and organizational change as the product of tensions between opposites
(Adorno, 1984). Hence, those working from the dialectical tradition suggest
that no aspect of our life world can be understood in isolation; one cannot
understand the object of criticism without understanding its opposites and
oppositional forces (e.g. Carr, 2000; Kersten, 2000). In order to critique what is
``known'' (i.e. the theses), the antitheses must be known; hence dialectics
actively calls for the examination and analysis of the ``oppositions'' and the
voices of those being repressed in order to understand the totality or
wholeness of organizational actions (Benson, 1977; Weick, 1979). Marcuse
(1993, p. 44) suggests that dialectical analysis ``recovers tabooed meaning and
thus appears almost as a return, or rather a conscious liberation of the
oppressed''. In the discourse of corporate culture, the recovering of the
``oppressed other'' thus enables us to understand the non-managerial voices
not represented in the theses legitimating corporate culture as a managerial
praxis.
From a dialectical perspective, it is possible to see corporate culture as an
organizational practice that fosters consciousness, identity-securing practices,
employee empowerment and the promotion of diversity in the workplace (e.g.
Gregory, 1983; Ouchi, 1981; Kilmann et al., 1986; Peters and Waterman, 1982;
Trice and Beyer, 1993). On the other hand, corporate culture can become
alienating (e.g. Parker, 2000) and serves as an instrument for the hegemonic
perpetuation of managerial ends (Willmott, 1993). In this paper, these
dialectical aspects of corporate culture are discussed with a recognition that the
phenomenon can be seen both as a source of identity and harmony (the
functionalist/integrative perspective) and as a source of coercion and
domination (the conflict/manipulative/disruptive perspective). Similarly, the
overall purpose of the paper ± using critical theory and dialectical mode of
analysis ± is to raise the issue of corporate culture from its one-sided and
unilinear discursive approach and move it to a dialectical one in order to see the
contradictions inhering.
Corporate culture as a source of identity and emancipation Critical theory
The history of traditional management and organization theory has been, for and hegemony of
the major part, a history of how to control workers and to harmonize their corporate culture
interests with those of management. The history of managerial practices
ranging from Taylorism and its various outgrowth has been how to control the
non-rational aspects of organizational behavior through coercive practices such
as increased managerial supervision. But it was not until the early 1980s that 593
organization and management researchers/consultants ``discovered'' corporate
culture as another instrument for the control of non-rational aspects of employee
behaviors. This new means of creating harmony in an organization should be
credited to the works of Peters and Waterman (1982), Deal and Kennedy (1982),
Ouchi (1980, 1981). With inspirations drawn from Barnard (1938), Peters and
Waterman (1982, p. 91) suggest that corporate culture is ``needed to manage
ambiguity and paradox''. According to Ouchi (1980), corporate culture is a
necessary tool for the creation of a harmonious working relationship in the sense
that common values and beliefs provide a harmony of interests that erases the
possibility for opportunistic behavior. According to Ouchi (1980) corporate
culture is important, because, when the transaction cost is complex and
ambiguous for organizations, a set of common values and beliefs is needed as a
regulatory mechanism. The reason is that ``culture and shared values are
important in unifying the social dimension of an organization'' (Peters and
Waterman, 1982, p. 106). This integrative perspective fits comfortably with the
machine-like organization where behavioral uniformity and ethical unison are
regarded as crucial to organizational cohesiveness. Top managers can build
such a culture by articulating a set of values and then reinforcing these with
formal policies, informal norms, language, stories and rituals. With consistency,
these values would be shared with enthusiasm by all employees and become
enduring and liberating (e.g. Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Ouchi, 1981; Peters and
Waterman, 1982; Schein, 1985).
This enthusiasm among organizational participants would set up a domino
effect, such as higher commitment, greater productivity and, ultimately, more
profits (Martin and Frost, 1999). The idea that corporate culture can create
enthusiasm, pride and nurtures the development of members' self-identity is
thus a central theme among the advocates of corporate culture as a managerial
praxis. The themes of enthusiasm, pride and identity are particular strong in
advocating corporate culture as a managerial tool. For instance, the projection
of the image of the organization to the public serves as a source of ``pride'' to the
employee and is capable of fostering cohesion and commitment inside the
organization. Through positive identification with the ideals of the
organization corporate pride is enhanced and acts as a defensive action when
employees see the company as worth defending, especially when its activities
are questioned or attacked by outsiders. Second, commitment is linked to the
identification with a cultural collectivity, in terms of either the corporate values
or norm or those provided in terms of professional or occupational
identification (Alvesson and Berg, 1992; Trice and Beyer, 1993).
JOCM As a source of organizational harmony and positive self-identity, corporate
14,6 culture, including the culture of the occupations within the organization,
denotes ``the shared philosophies, ideologies, values, assumptions, beliefs,
expectations, attitudes, and norms that knit a community together'' (Kilmann
et al., 1986; Trice and Beyer, 1993). Similarly, employees are seen to make sense
out of their conflicting interests through the values provided by the
594 organization or that provided by the culture of their occupations. In this way,
organizational values and employee faith and expectations in them help to
define not only employee identification with the organization, but also the
ontological identity of the individual.
Embodied in stories, myths, mission statements, and corporate policies that
create meaning out of routine, frequently experienced events, corporate culture
acts as a perceptual filter that creates a road-map for the individual to follow
(Weick, 1995). This ``meaningful experience'' provides a liberating force, within
which employees can act in ethical unison not only for the good of the
``cooperative whole'' but also for the good of the individual. In this way,
``corporate ideology replaces wider moral codes'' (Fineman, 1999, p. 298). In
achieving this liberating force, corporate culture becomes a means of
``expectations'' on the part of employees who would be otherwise lost.
Expectation replaces situations that would otherwise create arguments and
conflict. Of this, Weick (1995) suggests that one way in which organization
members make sense out of ambiguous situations is ``expectation'', because
``expectations are more directive than are arguments''.
Thus, corporate culture discourages dysfunctional work behaviors, as it
commits members of the organization to do things for and with one another
that are in the best interests of the organization. For instance, corporate mission
statements, in which the organization's values, policies, ideologies and
philosophies are stated, provide a frame of reference for members of the
organization and serve as guidelines by which all members must abide. This
harmonious and integrative aspect of the organization is not something new in
organizational discourses. As far back as in the 1930s Barnard has already
promoted such a position. For Barnard, the most critical ingredient of
successful organization is the inculcation of collective morals and the
abandonment of individual interest:
The distinguishing mark of the executive responsibility is that it requires not merely
conformance to a complex code of morals but also the creation of moral codes for others. The
most generally recognized aspect of this function is called securing, creating, inspiring of
``morale'' in an organization. This is the process of inculcating points of view, fundamental
attitudes, loyalties, to the organization or cooperative system, and to the system of objective
authority, that will result in subordinating individual interest and the minor dictates of
personal codes to the good of the cooperative whole (Barnard, 1938, p. 279).

Among other things, Barnard (1938, p. 38) notes that a willingness to contribute
to the ``cooperative system'' requires ``self-abnegation, the surrender of control
of personal conduct (and) the impersonalization of personal action''. Although
Barnard's work has been scoffed at as promoting ``moral imperialism'' (Perrow,
1986), many of the themes advocated by him have reappeared in the discourse Critical theory
and praxis of corporate culture. A particular example is in Peters and and hegemony of
Waterman (1982), when they suggest that the subordination of one's morals corporate culture
and norms to those of the organization is a necessity for corporate success:
So strong is the need for meaning . . . that most people will yield a fair degree of latitude or
freedom to institutions that give it to them. The excellent companies are marked by very
strong cultures, so strong that you either buy into their norms or get out. There's no halfway 595
house for most people in the excellent companies (Peters and Waterman, 1982, p. 77).

A strong argument usually made in favor of corporate culture by those inspired

by this integrative and functionalist paradigm is that it serves as a mechanism
for the promotion of corporate ethical unity. It is stated that top management
has an important role to play in creating and maintaining high ethical
standards that should guide the organizational actions of its members (Schein,
1985). According to this view, ``good'' ethical behavior can be achieved in part
by ensuring that the guiding corporate culture communicates a desired ethical
climate ± a shared set of understandings about what is considered ethically
correct behavior in an organization. Thus, social order is constructed and
maintained in organizations, because organizational actors interpret their
situations and seek to ``make sense'' through the negotiation of meanings
defined and provided by the organization (Weick, 1979). Thus, the culture of
the corporation is capable of helping ``meaning-seeking souls who invent and
invoke organizational rules to help them on their way'' (Fineman, 1999, p. 296).
Proponents of this perspective (from Barnard (1938) to Ouchi (1981) and Peters
and Waterman (1982)) see organizations as legitimate sources of personal
identity and meaning, and shapers of social behavior.

Subcultures, conflicting forms of control and fragmented identity

Although the conventional corporate culture discourse has upheld a vision of a
monolithic code of behavior as a source of organizational control, harmony and
other types of identity-securing avenues, other researchers have suggested that
it is wrong to focus on corporate culture as a monolithic entity. These
researchers (e.g. Gregory, 1983; Kunda, 1992; Martin, 1992; Trice and Beyer,
1993) argue that the presence of subcultures in an organization undermines the
monolithic image of an organization's culture and is capable of providing
identity that eschews the one provided by the organization. These researchers,
and several others, have shown how a particular corporate culture in an
organization may be cross-cut by ethnic, geographic, occupational, gender,
professional and industrial subcultures, reflecting the multiple cultures in
society at large (see, for instance, Trice and Beyer, 1993, Ch. 5). According to
this view, to focus on only one culture, usually managerial, is implicitly
ethnocentric; organizations are actually multicultural:
Organizations are typically multicultural, meaning that they have multiple subcultures
within them. Members can belong to more than one of these subcultures; in fact, belonging to
multiple subcultures may be more the rule than the exception. Subcultures represent distinct
``symbolic domains'' (Trice and Beyer, 1993, p. 175).
JOCM Different subcultures within an organization, such as ``occupational
14,6 subcultures, often compete with specific organizations' cultures for members'
minds and hearts'' (Trice and Beyer, 1993, p. 178). In the process of claiming
rights to perform certain tasks, members of occupations naturally tend to
emphasize what makes them like one another and different from other workers.
Thus, rather than focusing on organizational cultures as the monolithic place
596 for controlling and emancipating workers, we see subcultures as providing
more potent sources through which employees secure their identity. The reason
is that ``many occupations use cultural forms to help members manage their
emotions appropriately'' (Trice and Beyer, 1993, p. 183).
Several ``differentiation'' studies have drawn attention to competing forms of
control and fragmentation of identity in an organization; one deriving from the
monolithic organizational culture and the other from its subcultures. Van
Maanen and Barley (1984), for instance, see occupational communities as more
significant and determinant of people's values and norms than the monolithic
corporate culture. Thus, the differentiation perspective sees cultural
phenomena in organizations either as sources for consensus and harmony or
sources for conflict. Gregory (1983) and Trice and Beyer (1993) have shown
how the need for organization members to seek autonomy and control over
their occupational work poses a threat to the power and authority of
management. This identity fragmentation seems to be the result of ``dual
loyalties'' with which the organization member is confronted. But does having a
dual loyalty reduce one's loyalty to the monolithic organization culture?
Interestingly, after arguing for the need to recognize the potency of subcultures
over that of the organization, Trice and Beyer (1993) seem uncomfortable with
how to reconcile this dilemma. For instance, they suggest that the question is
``whether the presence of occupational culture dilutes the allegiance of members
of those occupations to their employment organization'' or ``how much control
occupational subcultures exert over their members compared with that exerted
by overall organizational cultures'' (Trice and Beyer, 1993, pp. 221-2). These
questions, which seem to be the crux of the authors' discussion, are
unfortunately left unanswered, other than by their suggestion that:
The primary conflict concerns control over how work is done. The mechanisms for control
that specific occupation and organizational management have established, and the scarcity
and value of occupational skills are likely to determine the outcomes of this conflict in specific
organizations. The mutual dependencies of the two groups on each other (occupational
allegiance versus organizational allegiance) and the overlap in some of their values and
practices moderate their competition for control (Trice and Beyer, 1993, p. 225).

To the authors' credit, however, they suggest that the managerial eÂlite and
members of occupations need one another to maintain their organizational
legitimacy in the wider environments. Hence, ``in order to maintain their
legitimacy organizations must conform with . . . categorical conformity,
structural conformity, procedural conformity, and personal conformity'' (Trice
and Beyer, 1993, p. 192). Thus, in spite of the existence of conflicts between the
monolithic organizational culture and the demands of its subcultures (or those
of management and occupational subcultures), there exists a common ground Critical theory
within which organizational identity is enforced among the individual and hegemony of
members. Anyway, pride in being a member of an occupation or profession corporate culture
does not deny the pride in belonging to the employment organization. Although
most occupational groups justify the work they do with the way they do it,
many would do this with reference to the organization of which they are
members. 597
It is no surprise, therefore, that the differentiation approach adopted by some
of these studies has been a target for criticism. First, the question of how a
particular subculture works, independent of the wider organizational culture,
has not been adequately addressed. For instance, Trice and Beyer's (1993) text,
in spite of its appeal for quasi-subcultures that exist in the organization, has
been critiqued for conceptual vagueness such as its ``contradictory functionalist
claims about unity combined with interactionist notions of diversity without
any apparent attempt to account for these tensions'' (Parker, 2000, p. 61). In
most of the differentiation studies, the possibility of resistance, conflict or
contradiction is marginalized in favor of an analysis of quasi-consensus
derived from occupational, ethnic, gender, divisional and all other types of
organizational subcultures. The reason for this inability to demarcate a
conceptual boundary between the monolithic organizational culture and the
potency of its subcultures in undermining the control of the whole over the
parts may be that all other cultural diversities or differentiations are seen in
terms of what Barnard (1938) calls ``minor dictates of personal codes'' that are of
little use to ``the cooperative whole.''

The hegemony of corporate culture

Rather than seeing corporate culture as conflict-reducing glue that provides
harmony and liberation to members of the organization, it can also been seen as
a tool for repression, domination and the hegemonic perpetuation of an eÂlitist
group within organizations and society at large. These are discussed in the
following order: identity, diversity, and empowerment.

The hegemony of corporate culture and its relationship to identity

There seems to be strong evidence of a dialectical tension between the
requirement for corporate/bureaucratic identity and that of the individual.
Among other things, Weber (1930) has warned that we are living in an era with
a historical progression toward more rationality, a stage of cultural
development that has produced ``specialists without spirits and sensualists
without heart.'' In other words, participation in organization is ``self-
abnegation'' (Barnard, 1938), as one must subordinate one's morals and norms
to those of the organization (Peters and Waterman, 1982). Participation in a
corporation in effect entails the replacement of one's identity with that of the
organization. In the process, individuals encounter an identity problem ± how
to reconcile individual identity with that sanctioned by the organization. About
JOCM this, Weber (1947) provided this classical caveat: organizations have the
14,6 potential to imprison humanity in an ``iron cage'':
Bureaucracy has been and is a power instrument of the first order . . . The individual
bureaucrat cannot squirm out of the apparatus in which he is harnessed . . . In the great
majority of cases, he is only a single cog in an ever-moving mechanism which prescribes to
him an essential route of march . . . More and more the material fate of the masses depends
598 upon the steady and correct functioning of the increasingly bureaucratic organization of
private capitalism. The idea of eliminating these organizations becomes more and more
Utopian (Weber, 1947).

Following Weber's work, the late 1950s through the 1960s and early 1970s
witnessed a body of research on organizational pathology ± what Kanter (1977,
p. 89) calls the ``inevitable interface of organizations with the personal lives of
their participants''. Many of these researchers (such as Coleman, 1974; Kanter,
1977: Milgram, 1974) accuse many organizations of generating alienation
among their participants that spills over into the wider society. Other studies
have also raised the issue of identity crises among individuals in organizations
such as alienation, over-conformity or ritualism (Seeman, 1975), including
worker powerlessness, meaninglessness, cultural estrangement, self-
estrangement and social isolation. These earlier studies indicate how
individuals are re-constructed through their active membership in
organizations. Once re-constructed, they become corporate actors who serve as
means for attaining corporate ends. According to Coleman (1974, p. 49), ``It
means that, among the variety of interests that men have, those interests that
have been successfully collected to create corporate actors are the interests that
dominate society''.
Recent research in organizations has also brought into focus the problem of
identity in organizations. Studies by Carr (2000), Deetz (1992), Fineman (1999),
Kunda (1992), Townley (1993), Willmott (1993), among several others, have
suggested that, through the active participation of individuals in organizations,
the identity of the individual is reconstructed to fit into the norms and values
prescribed by the culture of the organization. This reconstruction constitutes
the individual as a product of the social techniques of power. Today, we know
that in the Western world, by and large, the worth of the individual is defined in
terms of her/his occupation/career/employment status (Trice and Beyer, 1993).
Similarly, individual worth has been increasingly defined in terms of the ideals
prescribed either by the culture of the organization or by that of one's
occupation. According to Carr (2000, p. 296), ``the encouragement of an
organizational-ideal creates a psychological bonding to the organization and
can be such that the individual's self-identity is obtained through the work she/
he does that is approved or rewarded by the organization''.
Studies have indicated how organization cultures are capable of creating a
kind of ``psychic prison,'' constructed by the members themselves as a
protection against their own internal tensions. Carr (2000), for instance, makes
the point that the organization and its leaders, through symbolic, material and
other means, may satisfy narcissistic needs so well that the employees view
their identities in terms of their work context. Organizations also conquer Critical theory
individual identity through strategies designed to control the emotions of and hegemony of
organizational members. For instance, Fineman (1999, p. 300) has shown that corporate culture
emotional control is taken as a resource that an organization needs to get the
job done, where ``negative thinking is wiped out with scripts for all occasions''.
Similar examples of loss of individual identity due to ``emotional enculturation''
abound. For instance, Kunda (1992), who, in a study of employee involvement 599
in a high-tech corporation, reports that:
By choice they have entered into a contract that is more than economic, one that must contend
with overt external claims on self-definition. Behavioral conformity and evidence of a vaguely
defined ``loyalty'' are not enough. A demonstration of ``incorporation'' of culture, of adoption of
an organizationally defined and sanctioned self, is required. Consequently, the appearance of
personal autonomy ± a condition naturally (and ideologically) associated with the high status
they seek ± is threatened. Although it is not immediately apparent, the price of power is
submission: not necessarily to demands concerning one's behavior, as is typical of low-status
work, but to prescriptions regarding one's thoughts and feelings, supposedly the most
cherished belonging of autonomous beings (Kunda, 1992, p. 214).

Hence, corporate culture induces individuals to focus attention on the

requirements of their position in the organization, while blanketing the
consequences of the roles on their lives as ``natural persons'' (Coleman, 1974).
In terms of occupational cultures within an organization, Trice and Beyer
(1993, p. 184) suggest that ``some occupations involve working conditions that
isolate their members from other members of society''. Thus, for strategic
reasons, those of genuine sincerity, or merely heart-felt, the individual has no
choice; the corporation or its occupational culture has defined the choices. The
consequence is that individual identity is replaced with corporate or
occupational identity. Because progress in one's corporate career is made
more possible through increased consumption of the material and
psychological products of the organization, corporate ideals become so
gratifying that, no matter how much the organization shuts out any other
form of alternatives, that provided by the organization is regarded as the only
one.
The point here is that, through corporate culture, members of the
organization abdicate their ontological identity, whether religious, family or
other source of identification, to that sanctioned by the corporation.
Specifically, Seeman (1975) discusses the conditions that favor alienation in the
workplace such as the loss of individual identity, self-estrangement, as
individual organization members engage in corporate activities that are not
intrinsically rewarding, and powerlessness, as individuals have no control over
their lives. The internalization of corporate ideals, the conquest of individual
ethics and the replacement of these with corporate ethics are some of the ways
in which individuals abdicate their ontological status. Corporate culture and
the manner in which it is practiced become a way in which hegemony is
perpetuated, producing a ``satisfaction'' that generates submission and weakens
the rationality of protest.
JOCM The hegemony of corporate culture and its relationship to diversity
14,6 Related to the preceding discussion is another aspect of the hegemonic
manifestation of corporate culture, i.e. diversity repression. From the traditional
research and literature, the image of corporate culture has been presented as a
phenomenon that enhances organizational diversity. Terms such as
organizational pluralism, occupational and professional cultures, and
600 multicultural organization have, in the past decade or so, appeared in
management texts as a way of legitimizing the uniqueness of cultures and
subcultures in the workplace (e.g. Gregory, 1983; Martin, 1992; Trice and Beyer,
1993). Brought about by increasing and anticipated changes in the demographics
of the labor market and increased pressure from the USA's EEOC, corporations
have been encouraged (or forced) to acknowledge strategies to ``manage'' a
diversified workforce (Golembiewski, 1995; Kersten, 2000). Similar developments
in other areas of management embrace corporate culture as the panacea for
solving the problem of, or diverting attention from, diversity in organizations. For
instance, in strategic management, corporate culture has been used to direct the
efforts of organizational members toward the realization of strategic missions and
objectives of the organization. According to Thompson and Strickland (1999,
p. 338):
A company's culture can be strong and cohesive in the sense that the company conducts its
business according to a clear and explicit set of principles and values, that management
devotes considerable time to communicating these principles and values and explaining how
they relate to its business environment, and that the values are shared widely across the
company.

In managerial and organizational practices in general, the presence of

organizational subcultures is upheld to maintain differences in perceptions that
reflect employment status, tasks, gender, occupation, race, and ethnicity. It is
suggested that the existence of these diversities in ``subcultures'' nurtures and
promotes diversities in the organization, reflecting diversity in the wider
society in which the organization is embedded (Trice and Beyer, 1993).
Diversity in terms of religion, ethnicity, gender, social class, gerontocracy
and other phenomena are seen as significant sources for people's self-
identification and the basis for their individual signification (Hardy and Clegg,
1999). But, as has been indicated by Fineman (1999) and Trice and Beyer (1993),
these sources of diversity, premised on extra-organizational signification, are
reconciled with the culture of the organization or that of the occupation. This
enculturation is possible through the demands, values, myths, socialization
practices and various forms of indoctrination offered by the culture of the
organization or that of its occupation; hence the homogenization of societal
diversity within the monolithic culture of the organization or that of a
particular occupational culture. This homogenization then serves as a point of
reference, because ``members look to one another for support and confirmation
of the meanings they ascribe to events around and for approval and
disapproval for patterns of behavior'' (Trice and Beyer, 1993, p. 182). As a
major carrier of social order, corporate culture not only ties the identity of the
individual to that of the company, but also creates a pattern of behavior in Critical theory
which diversity is reconciled with that preferred either by the organizational and hegemony of
culture or that of its occupational cultures. Hence, rather than promoting corporate culture
diversity, corporate culture represses it, because ``Cultural diversity is
dissolved in the acid bath of the core corporate values'' (Willmott, 1993, p. 534).
From the perspective of critical theory, research has shown that the norms
within which the organization is legitimized mirror those of the dominant 601
group in the larger society (Grubbs, 2000; Kersten, 2000; Nkomo, 1992; Ogbor,
2000; Townley, 1993). These norms, through organizational myths, sagas,
taboos, story-telling, career choices, professionalism, music and feeding
prescriptions in the organization's cafeteria, etc., reinforce and institutionalize
the dominance of the white European male definition of reality. These studies
have shown how corporate culture serves as the means through which
organizations reproduce the structure of power relationship in the wider
society, because, through it, the diversity within the larger society is smoothly
reconciled with the values of the dominant ``white values'' in the organization.
Hence researchers have indicated that the very concepts of manager,
management and the institutional arrangement that legitimizes managerial
practices, such as occupational cultures, are social artifacts reflecting the social
relations or power order in contemporary society, based on hierarchical
segmentation and value appropriation.
As a managerial praxis, corporate culture thus offers a new ideological and
mediated cultural response designed to contain, restrain and obscure
fundamental racial inequalities inherent in contemporary society (Kersten,
2000). Through corporate culture, assimilation themes such as organizational
fit, conformity, team play and politically correct behavior, the organization
serves as the medium through which diversity within the larger society is
repressed. Similarly, Grubbs (2000, p. 225) suggests that organizations serve as
modes of imperialism such as ``cultural domination, cultural imposition, and
cultural fragmentation''. This mode of diversity control includes corporate and
occupational prescription of ``appropriate'' attitudes and behaviors that are seen
as organizationally and politically correct. According to Kersten (2000),
although blacks are required to reproduce ``white consciousness'' as a condition
of participation in society and in organizations, and continuously find their
consciousness contested in day-to-day interactions, no such requirement exists
for whites, who can assume the naturalness of their reality without
consequences or repercussions. Being ``white'' in an organization becomes the
invisible norm for how the dominant culture perpetuates itself in the workplace
(Ogbor, 2000; Nkomo, 1992). In the workplace, the point of behavioral reference
is defined, presented and manifested in subtle patterns of everyday reality and
in organizational life that ``take the white norm of behavior, interaction and
perception as its not-so-subtle standards for normality, beauty, properness,
professionalism, and everything else'' (Kersten, 2000, p. 239).
By describing and presenting reality as ``collective patterns of action'',
corporate culture seldom shows respect for diversity in activities, practice, and
JOCM ways of viewing the world that are particularly valued by, and associated with,
14,6 members of non-dominant groups in society. Because corporate culture is
constituted by the ideologies of the dominant group in society, it rarely attends
to the voices of the non-dominant groups ± including women, Asian-
Americans, African-Americans, native Americans, and a multitude of other
groups in contemporary society. The monolithic nature of corporate culture (in
602 spite of the existence of occupational subcultures) is averse to diversity,
pluralism and non-conformity. That is why some researchers (e.g. Kersten,
2000; Willmott, 1993) insist that corporate culture provides the means through
which attention is diverted from the diversity within contemporary society and
its institutions. Diversity repression is also achieved through the assimilation
of cultural diversity (a process of one-way adaptation), where everyone is
expected to conform with the values and norms of the dominant culture either
through the culture offered by the organization or those offered by its
occupational cultures.

The hegemony of corporate culture and its relationship to empowerment

Disempowerment is achieved through organizational practices such as training
and various forms of indoctrination and emotional control. In managerial
discourse, especially that aspect concerned with human resource management,
training is celebrated as one of the ways through which employees are
empowered, supposedly because training helps employees achieve new
concepts, build new skills and solve difficult problems related to interpersonal
interaction and technical difficulties. An organization with a strong corporate
culture is expected to train its employees, because training helps members
develop their own tools for change.
Research has shown, however, that employee training may veil attempts of
management to co-opt employee support for an unpopular decision, because the
types of training programs administered by management are self-perpetuating
and embodiments of ``scripted-selves'', where the trainees acknowledge a need
to change, but are unable to do so. In this way, training employees becomes ``the
paradox of emancipation'' (Rusaw, 2000). In this paradox, employees are
indoctrinated to carry out that which is sanctioned by management. Thus,
training is seen as another way of tying organizational members to the ideals of
the organization rather than as a means of empowering them. The reason is that
``training and development in interpersonal and social skills, communication,
and listening skills also constitute individuals in particular ways, tying them to
appropriate identities'' (Townley, 1993, p. 537).
Through corporate training and indoctrination, rites of passage, and various
forms of mentorship programs, employees are provided with the skills that
enable them to regulate themselves in the absence of managerial gaze. In other
words, employees are given the opportunity to regulate themselves, while
management can devote more time to other issues, such as their need for self-
preservation. This ``self-imposed surveillance'' constitutes a form of
``internalized panopticon'' (Boje, 1993), where employees themselves turn the
disciplinary gaze upon themselves through the assimilation of cultural values Critical theory
and norms. In this way, not only do organizations exert a totalitarian control on and hegemony of
their members, but the members themselves take an active part in the exercise corporate culture
of this control (Smith and Wilkinson, 1985).
Employees are also disempowered through what Alvesson and Berg (1992)
call ``third-order control''. Here, disempowerment is achieved through a kind of
control that is directed at people's minds, such as values, ethical beliefs, emotions, 603
aesthetics, ideologies, pride, etc. By manipulating employees' perception of reality
through corporate values and philosophies, the opposition/difference between
individual and corporate consciousness of reality is obliterated. In this context,
Jackall (1988) reports managers' dilemma in the workplace:
What is right in the corporation is not what's right in a man's home or in his church. What is
right in the corporation is what the guy above wants from you. That's what morality is in the
corporation (Jackall, 1988, p. 109).

The subordination of one's morals and ethical code is held in place by fear of
unemployment, demotion, non-promotion, humiliation, and/or appeals to
loyalty or achievement (Fineman, 1999). In other words, organization members
are disempowered through acts of emotional control, where they happily give
up their position in favor of that recommended by the organization in order to
be identified with its ideals. Second, disempowerment is secured through acts
that enhance the employee's strategic motive, namely, playing along in order to
realize one's manipulative motives.
Seen within the context of critical theory, corporate culture serves a
totalitarian function rather than providing a context for real empowerment
(Deetz, 1992; Kersten, 2000). It is as if employees are empowered through
corporate culture to disempower themselves. In doing this, organizational
members accept a form of false consciousness which serves to defeat any form
of opposition. Marcuse (1964), for instance, has shown how this type of ``false
consciousness'' favors the condition for disempowerment:
The liquidation of two-dimensional cultures takes place not through the denial and rejection
of the cultural values, but through their wholesale incorporation into the established order,
through their reproduction and display on a massive scale (Marcuse, 1964, p. 57).

In this respect, it seems to make little difference whether repression is

accomplished through a Theory X or a Theory Y management approach.
Through the imposition of corporate culture, organization participants are
preconditioned for the spontaneous acceptance of what is offered. Since
pleasure is derived from increased participation in the ideals of the corporation,
the mechanisms offered for worker empowerment work for rather than against
the status quo of corporate culture repression.

Conclusion: critical theory, organizational change and corporate

culture
Several suggestions have been offered in terms of critical theory and its
relevance to organizational change. First, critical theory can help trainers
JOCM navigate resistance to change by providing insights into ways in which power
14,6 and authority become legitimized and institutionalized in organizational
practices. Second, critical theory enables us to examine and resist false
assumptions embedded in unquestioned practices and in resisting unjust
managerial practices (Rusaw, 2000). Third, critical theory enables us to
question the role of organizations and their accountability to the community
604 (Kersten, 2000). Fourth, critical theory helps in rejecting existing modes of
imperialism, cultural domination and cultural imposition and creates forms of
emancipation (Grubbs, 2000; Carr, 2000; Alvesson and Deetz, 1999) in the
attempts to bring about changes in organizations. Fifth, through critical theory,
researchers are encouraged to go beyond the assumptions, ideologies and
norms that remain uncritical to social bias (Ogbor, 2000). As in several other
studies in the tradition of critical theory, this paper calls attention to the role
eÂlite agendas play in shaping social and organizational realities, and the
concomitant resistance to these agendas.
Although several studies in the critical theory tradition have called attention
to the problems embedded in unquestioned practices, and to why emancipation
from managerial hegemony is necessary, many have not really examined the
``defense'' mechanisms people use to resist change in organization. Why do
some of us remain uncritical to the social, ideological and institutional patterns
that operate as techniques of power and social domination? What are the
obstacles to organizational change that enhance a genuine emancipation from
the repression of the status quo, as presented in the culture of the organization?
Why do we, as academicians in management studies, support managers with
ideas for cultural-ideological control and provide the aura of science to support
the use of managerial domination techniques?
Already, Alvesson (1991), Rosen (1984) and Ogbor (2000) have discussed
these obstacles to include the lack of social autonomy of researchers, the
importance of practitioners' goals and perceptions in the formulation of
research problems and evaluation criteria, and the socio-economic and political
relevance of research questions. For these reasons, critical analysis is
backgrounded and resistance to change is resisted, when practitioners and
positivistic researchers invoke ``relevance'' as evaluation criteria (Rosen, 1984).
For instance, when the explanatory product of critically minded theorists
diverges from that offered by the status quo, especially when the knowledge
offered does not function to legitimize and reify the societal bases of power and
relations of domination, such knowledge is not only ignored but also seen as
heretical.
The fear of not being seen as a rebel against the status quo thus provides a
powerful force for resisting a critical stance. Second, when the object of
criticism (the status quo, the corporate culture) has been able to offer to the
masses what it has presented as the only alternative, both organizationally and
socially, the need for denial and criticism appears to be unnecessary. That is
why Marcuse (1964, p. 1) suggests that ``comfortable, smooth, reasonable,
democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization'', where
``independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are Critical theory
being deprived of their basic function in a society which seems increasingly and hegemony of
capable of satisfying the needs of the individuals through the way in which it is corporate culture
organized.'' The reduction of opposition to the status quo and the constraint of
alternatives lie in the ability of the status quo in defining reality. The idea is
that, as long as we are presented with the ``alternatives'' by the object and
subject of criticism, and we are seduced to live within the confinement of what 605
the organization and its corporate culture have to offer, we accept this as the
only available alternative.
For instance, empowered, multicultural, pluralistic and diversified
organizations with their flat, self-designed, virtual, and team-oriented project
structures (as defined by management) are heralded as better alternatives to
the Weberian organizational model. Under the conditions of becoming healthier
employees within the alternatives presented by the status quo, non-conformity
appears to be socially useless; the more so when the organization is able to
define the alternatives faced by its employees.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being loyal to an organization, or
with being a dedicated employee. As a ``cooperative whole'' (Barnard, 1938),
loyalty and dedication are essential for a good working relationship. However,
when loyalty to the organization becomes a substitute for living one's own
life, when the organization enhances its centrality in the lives of its employees,
and when we accept unfreedom as freedom, the indoctrination can become so
powerful that the emotional refusal to go along appears neurotic. And when the
indoctrination becomes so powerful, organization members become actively
supportive of the control process rather than critical and oppositional. Like the
bureaucratic society, the ideals and products of corporate culture:
. . . indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a falsehood consciousness, which is immune
against falsehood. And as these [corporate] beneficial products become available to more
individuals . . . the indoctrination they carry . . . becomes a way of life. It is a good way of life
± much better than before and, as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change
(Marcuse, 1964, p. 12).

The fact that most organization members accept, or are made to accept, the
conditions as defined and presented by the organization ± whether from
strategic or ``heartfelt motives'' ± does not render the organization and its
culture less hegemonic. From a critical theory point of view, members of an
organization must come to see such situations as they are and find their way
from false to true consciousness.
This article has shown the dialectics of control within the organization and
how certain groups manage to achieve hegemonic status and the strategies and
justifications they use to maintain that position within the context of corporate
culture. As is appropriately pointed out by Marcuse (1964, p. 242), ``The
standard of living attained in the most advanced industrial areas is not a
suitable model of development if the aim is pacification''. The position of this
article is that there has been a lot of pacification in terms in which corporate
culture is used to reconcile and conquer oppositions by the status quo. For
JOCM organizational change to be meaningful, two approaches are suggested within
14,6 the context of critical theory.
First, it is time we critically examine not only the context within which
corporate culture is socially and managerially legitimized to naturalize a one-
sided discursive practice, but also the strategies both employees and
researchers use in strategizing subordination.
606 Second, rather than remaining as cheerleaders to a one-sided social discourse
and praxis that favor the doctrines and ends of a section of a society in a
supposedly diversified and pluralistic society, we should question the
ideological bases of social discourses, as reified in corporate culture. For, as
Marcuse (1964, p. 57) has pointed out:
The liquidation of two-dimensional culture takes place not in the denial and rejection of the
cultural values, but through their wholesale incorporation into the established order, through
their reproduction and display on a massive scale.

Third, and more importantly, the article suggests an examination of the

reasons why researchers and practitioners remain uncritical to hegemonic
managerial practices such as corporate culture.
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