embraced new, sometimes radically different views on understanding the culture (e.g. post-modernism and sociobiology). The systemic view of organisation and management was slowly running out of options, as originally it did not include culture as a subsystem. Initially, many management specialists thought that culture would become a remedy for the issues of the theory and practice of management. Research and publications which assumed a broad functionalist understanding of organisational culture became very popular among both theorists and practitioners. Among the large number of authors taking this approach to organisational culture as an internal variable, one can name E. Schein, Ch. Handy, T. Deal, A. Kennedy, P. Bate and A. Pettigrey37, with G. Hofstede as the key representative of the comparative cross-cultural studies approach. Some of the concepts of organisational culture, such as the ‘iceberg model’38 or G. Hofstede’s ‘onion model’, became so popular ←22 | 23→that they even permeated the general public via guides and textbooks39. T. Peters and P. Waterman’s bestseller, which put the value of the organisation at the centre of the proposed 7S model, reached the heights of popularity40. The dominant functionalist perspective towards culture assumed that it could be radically changed by means of organising techniques, and in practice, this optimistic approach to cultural change was indeed verified. But many culture transformation programmes of the time gave unpredictable results. With time, even in the opinion of some of the functionalism researchers, culture had become too amorphous and too poorly understood to provide a basis for a theory of management understood in the neopositivist sense.
The development of the interpretative-symbolic view expressed the growing scepticism with regard to the functionalist approach to culture. Researchers such as G. Morgan, G. Burrell and L. Smircich offered a look at organisations through the lens of interpretively understood culture41. This approach made use of the achievements of the symbolic interactionism paradigm in sociology, cultural anthropology and other social sciences, to describe the phenomenon of organisational culture. It meant that the focus was on anthropologically understood, individual, non-generalised case studies, the aim of which was to capture the meaning of ‘organisation’. Researchers utilizing the concepts of the interpretative understanding of cultural trends include L. Smircich42, N. Brunsson, J. Van Maanen, M. Pacanowsky, G. Morgan, M.J. Hatch, I.L. Mangham, M.A. Overington, C. Eden, C. Ouellet, and P. Cossette43. Over time, the interpretative trend became very diverse in its interests, using the achievements of organisational researchers who had not focused on the theory of culture in management before, such as K. Weick44.
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Another cultural trend which appeared in management studies and was inspired by the humanities was postmodernism. Postmodernists took a far-reaching critical look at the functionalist, universalist and objectivist cultural approaches. They proposed the concept of non-fundamentalist discourse based on methodological anarchism. Flagship postmodern ideas, such as deconstruction, simulacrum and metanarration, have gained favour in management. Some authors also used strong metaphors from organisational culture, such as theatre, rhizome and the panopticon45. Following the precursors of postmodernism and postmodern philosophers such as M. Foucault, P. Feyerabend, R. Rorty and J.F. Lyotard, a critique of objectivist efforts at cultural research was undertaken and, simultaneously, the ideas of cultural imperialism of modern science were highlighted. Postmodernism is an anti-methodological trend and of the few attempts to use postmodern methods, deconstruction and gloss were found to be essay writings rather than works of science. Some authors, previously interested in anti-functionalist, non-fundamentalist approaches to organisational culture, became postmodernists, including S. Clegg, G. Burrell, R. Cooper, B. Czarniawska-Jorges, M. Kostera, M.J. Hatch, P. Engholm, D.M. Boje, R.P. Gephart Jr and T.J. Thatchenkery46. In addition, many researchers and practitioners used metaphors and other concepts embedded in postmodernism. From the point of view of management sciences, postmodernism as a whole has not become a major trend. Nonetheless, it is worth noting its presence in management’s cultural trends. Postmodernism in management is often confused with the interpretative approach and the critical trend. However, the differences are very significant and affect both the epistemological and the methodological sphere, and there will be more discussion of the distinction between non-functional paradigms in cultural studies in subsequent chapters. Radical postmodernism has been sharply criticised, yet in most cases with a well-founded critique on the part of the scientific community of its irrationalism, epistemological relativism, lack of scientific ←24 | 25→rigour and vagueness of the concept47. The result of this is the slow fading away of postmodernism in science, including the cultural discourse. Some researchers believe that the loss of importance of post-modernism also marks an increase in the importance of the realistic approach to culture in management48.
The most recent research approach to cultural processes in the organisation is the critical view (Critical Management Studies – CMS), although of course its roots can be traced back to the ancient past. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx described the capitalist exploitation of workers in factories and the bourgeois culture created around it. CMS representatives derive the achievements of the Frankfurt School and radical feminism directly from neo-Marxism. When presenting the metaphor of organisation, G. Morgan interprets it as a ‘mental prison’ and mentions a number of topics critical to the dominant culture of business: opposition to dehumanisation, the lack of responsibility, the exploitation of poorer countries by richer countries, as well as the utilisation of natural resources in a predatory manner and the destruction of ecosystems49. According to the representatives of the critical trend, all these problematic cases of the exploitive culture of modern business are systemically conditioned and not purely pathological. Culture in the view of the radical trend is a tool for wielding power. The first author to write about the issue of organisational culture from the critical point of view was H. Willmott, who in 1993 described organisational culture as a kind of ideology, a ‘false consciousness’, psychomanipulation and social engineering aimed at maintaining the status quo in the form of the exploitation of workers50. Since then, publications by M. Alvesson, D. Knights, J. Brewis, J. Gavin and A. Prasad have further developed this critical look at culture in management51.
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Obviously, this analysis does not exhaust the richness of all schools and topics of cultural discourse in organisations and management. For example, the development of the concept of organisational identity, cognitive organisation, organisational learning and many other aspects of management which can be regarded as cultural has been omitted. They have been assigned to one of the schools by default – for example, organisational identity is an important element of the interpretative understanding of organisational culture. Nor has any analysis of the prospects for the development of the cultural trend been carried out, because it is going to be the subject of the next part of the monograph. Taking into account the simplified nature of the analysis presented, the development of cultural afterthought may still be sorted in the form of eight trends presented below:
1. Preculturalism, encompassing the period from the birth of the management sciences to the creation
