Organizational Subcultures in a Soft Bureaucracy: Resistance Behind the Myth and Facade of an Official Culture

John M. Jermier, John W. Slocum, Louis W. Fry and Jeannie Gaines
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John M. Jermier: College of Business, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620
John W. Slocum: Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275
Louis W. Fry: LWF Enterprises, Inc., 4250 Five Points Road, Corpus Christi, Texas 78410
Jeannie Gaines: University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701

Organization Science, 1991, vol. 2, issue 2, 170-194

Abstract: The primary purpose of this study was to compare and contrast an organization's official culture and its subcultures. The proposition that soft bureaucracies project a rigid exterior appearance, symbolizing what key stakeholders expect, while masking a loosely-coupled set of interior practices, guided this analysis of a police organization. The official culture (crime-fighting command bureaucracy) was examined as an arbitrary set of symbols and meaning structures arranged according to top management preferences. Using qualitative and quantitative data, the organization's subcultures were profiled. It was demonstrated that top management was unable to impose organization-wide conformance with the official culture. There was close conformance to the official culture in only one of five distinct clusters of officers (“crime-fighting commandoes,” 21 percent of the sample). Officers in the other clusters (“crime-fighting street professionals,” “peace-keeping moral entrepreneurs,” “ass-covering legalists,” and “anti-military social workers”) substantially modified or rejected top management's dictates. They represented resistance subcultures, similar in their opposition to official culture, but unique in form. It was concluded that other organizations, not known for their monolithic image and solidarity, also encompass subcultures.

Keywords: organizational conflict; subculture; counterculture; symbolic bureaucracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1991
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