Subjectivities: how can they help us to understand organizational cultures?
The concept of organizational culture is key to understanding companies and institutions. Since this term has gained popularity in recent decades, it is necessary to have a critical reading of what it means and what constitutes it. In this sense, the notion of subjectivities can be useful to identify the role that diversity plays within organizations.
According to Marcela Lagarde (1990, 238), subjectivity is:
“A particular conception of the world […], constituted by a set of norms, values, beliefs, languages, and ways of apprehending the world, conscious and unconscious, physical and intellectual”.
Although the term is not often discussed or employed in business contexts, it should not be forgotten that the members of this kind of organization bring their own subjectivities to their working environment.
For employees and managers, their formal education is possibly one of the main elements that shape the way they act at their jobs. Andrew Orta in his article Managing the Margins: MBA Training, International Business, and “the Value Chain of Culture” explained how MBA schools produce business subjects. He states that “MBA programs do more than provide technical information. They instill habits that shape the ways future managers assimilate and act on” (2013, 694). Considering that companies are made up of very different departments, such as Marketing, Accountancy, and Human Resources, it is natural that the people who are part of these areas have diverse academic backgrounds. This leads to having a multitude of subjectivities collaborating with each other to achieve the goals of the organization.
When it comes to multinational companies, understanding and managing subjectivities can get even more difficult. For example, the article “Delivering the Secret Sauce”: Culture and Identity in a Corporate Merger by Barry Dornfield (2017), it is described how complex it was to bring together “two firms of different scale, history, and identity in the hospitality industry — a large global conglomerate purchasing a small American boutique brand ”(293). Dornfield explains that the members of both parts of the merger did not understand the ways of acting of their counterparts, since each organization had its own working style. As can be observed in this case, mergers give rise to a set of negotiations that aim to manage subjectivities and jointly create an organizational culture that fits all parties involved.
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In a very similar way, it is important to take into account the understanding that employees have of particular tools. Annemarie Dorland (2017) in The View From The Studio: Design Ethnography and Organizational Cultures defines what ethnography means to a group of designers that work in the same firm. For them, it is all about looking back from the future and doing research by focusing on looking inward. It is possible that if one of those designers starts working in another company, they would take with them the subjectivities they have acquired in their latest job. This can cause a conflict if their new coworkers have a different understanding of what it means to do ethnography.
In conclusion, the idea of subjectivity is helpful to study organizations when the concept of culture does not give enough clarity. It draws attention to the unique conception of the world that each member has, which can be shaped by elements such as academic background and the firms they have been part of. Without a doubt, the anthropology of business and organizations can shine a light on how human diversity is present in a company, where it is often assumed that all workers share the same culture.
Bibliography
Dorland, A. 2017. The View From The Studio: Design Ethnography and Organizational Cultures. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceeding. 323–246.
Dornfeld, Barry (2017). “Delivering the Secret Sauce”: Culture and Identity in a Corporate Merger. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, 293–302.
Lagarde, M. 1990. Los cautiverios de las mujeres, madresposas, monjas, putas, presas y locas. Ciudad de México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
Orta, Andrew (2013). Managing the margins: MBA training, international business, and “the value chain of culture”. American Ethnologist, 40, num 4. 689–703.
