Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry

'Living in the Blender of Change': the Carnival of Control in a Culture of Culture

Badham, Richard Garrety, Karin

Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University | School of Management, Marketing and Employment Relations, University of Wollongong

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Abstract

Traditional structural-functional approaches to organizational change, as well as critics of those approaches, often offer overly structured and rationalised views of how change occurs. This paper attempts to build upon processual studies of change and critiques of overly hegemonic views of managerial control by seeking to capture the complex, emotive and fluid character of organisational 'changing'. In pursuit of this aim, the paper documents these characteristics of change through a personalised ethnography of a micro-incident -- a critical change meeting -- in an Australian steel making plant undergoing cultural change. In conclusion, it is argued that even the more sophisticated studies of the emergent process-like character of organisational change fail to fully capture the ambiguous, ironic, emotional, and uncertain character of events in the 'blender' of change.

Metadata

Journal Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry 
Volume 2 
Issue 4 
Issue date 2003 
Type Article 
Language en
Pagination 23-38
ISSN 1532-5555