Document Information
Defining Corporate Culture
How Social Scientists Define Culture, Values and Tradeoffs among Them
An effort to move beyond the rhetoric and firmly establish an understanding of corporate culture would greatly contribute to any attempts to describe, measure, or alter culture in a corporate setting. This paper is prepared as part of an ongoing project on “Corporate Cultures: Meaning and Measurement” under the LRN-RAND Center on Corporate Law, Ethics and Governance. While the project will eventually develop a framework through which it is possible to measure corporate culture, the first step was to develop a clear and concise definition of the frequently used and sometimes obscure concept of “culture” in various social science literatures. This literature review was conducted in an effort to clarify and improve understanding of this terminology.
Free, downloadable PDF file(s) are available below.
RAND makes an electronic version of this document available for free as a public service.
Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 7.0 or higher for the best experience.
Contents
Chapter One:
Introduction
Chapter Two:
Methodology
Chapter Three:
Early Cultural Theories in the Social Sciences
Chapter Four:
Modern and Post-Modern Cultural Theories
Chapter Five:
Organizational Studies and the Notion of Corporate Culture
Chapter Six:
Conclusion
The research described in this report was conducted by the LRN-RAND Center for Corporate Ethics, Law, and Governance.
This product is part of the RAND working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers' latest findings, to solicit informal peer review, or to publish a technical appendix to an article published in a scientific journal. They have been approved for circulation by the sponsoring RAND research unit but typically have not been formally edited or peer reviewed. Unless otherwise indicated, working papers can be quoted and cited without permission of the author, provided the source is clearly referred to as a working paper.
Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the RAND Permissions page.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
* RAND research is conducted across divisions, centers, and projects; these organizational components are represented in the "Related RAND Divisions" section above.
Top
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2008 RAND Corporation. Last Modified: December 07, 2007 