Cultural Approach to Organization

The cultural approach to organization begins with ethnography.

Ethnography is also broken down into several parts including metaphors, stories (corporate, personal, and collegial), and rituals. Metaphors includes "I'm heartbroken" (the person is hurt, but their heart is not actually broken) or the expression "America is a melting spot" (America is not a pot with melting substances, but a mix of different people in one place). When I worked at a Dairy Queen for three years, there were several holidays that had special rituals. On July 3rd, our town has a fireworks show and while we were stuck at work, we would be prepared at the drive-thru for the massive amount of cars to come for ice cream. Even though we were normally only opened until 11p.m., we always prepared to stay until around midnight. On the Fourth of July, we were allowed to dress up in red, white, and blue instead of our uniforms. New Years Eve during the day, we had a half-off sale on everything in the store, so all the employees were prepared for the crowds. These rituals happened everyday. Finally, there are stories. In the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Andie is part of a writer for the magazine Composure. Andie takes story ideas that can really interfere into people's lives (like the editor suggesting Andie's friend write about her love life) and came up with an idea to protect her friend and help her own "How to..." section of the magazine. This example shows the corporate story. A personal story in the movie would be the editor bragging about Andie's section of the magazine. A collegial story would be when the editor tells Andie she can finally write about whatever she wants, but it can not have anything to do with politics and has to deal with more of a fashion feel. A scholar put ethnography to the test with the Major League Baseball. The final step of ethnography is finding someone who can enforce the ethnography.