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Stanford contributed significantly to the organizational culture movement that occurred in organization studies from 1970–2000. This chapter traces developments at Stanford and puts the contributions of its researchers and scholars in the context of the many influences that shaped the study of organizational culture during this period. In addition to the historical account, there is speculation about why the culture movement at Stanford more or less ended but might yet be revived, either by those studying institutionalization processes or by those who resist them.

The paradigmatic separation of the strategy and identity literatures constitutes an ongoing problem for the extension of either into more global contexts. The theorization proposed in this chapter presents rhetoric as the means by which the ‘strategy work’ of reimagining future options and the ‘identity work’ of reformulating the meaning of past actions may be integrated in the present moment. By locating both strategy work and identity work within the continuity of experience, we suggest that scholars will be better able to develop theoretically integrated, empirically grounded and globally relevant studies of strategy.

This chapter demonstrates (1) divergence between spending based upon a budget ratcheting model and a benchmark spending model, (2) that this divergence affects organizational performance, and (3) that internal benchmarking enables unit-to-unit performance comparisons, despite claims of organizational or unit uniqueness. We contrast two spending models to examine whether the divergence, or cost estimation gap, affects operating performance across inpatient (n=4,536) and outpatient departments (n=8,438) in 23 U.S. Army hospitals. Using a fixed-effects panel data methodology for fiscal years 2004–2006, we find that unit managers’ spending in this setting is more closely approximated by budget ratcheting. Using multiple performance metrics measured via a DuPont-like decomposition, we find that, within a specified range, operating performance generally improves as resources become constrained. Outside that range, however, we find nonlinear performance effects that approximate a quadratic loss function. Our benchmark model enables clinical department comparisons while controlling for facility, clinical specialty, and case mix severity. The resulting departmental comparability facilitates identification and communication of best practices across the entire Army hospital system. These results should be of interest to corporate executives, government officials, and agency managers who have responsibility for establishing funding mechanisms that include performance-based components.

Purpose: The purpose of the chapter is to determine the connection between organizational culture and specifics of the process of decision making in modern business systems and to determine the directions of managing the organizational culture depending on the set criteria of decision making.

Methodology: A proprietary classification of the types of organizational culture of modern business systems according to the criterion of employees' involvement into decision making is offered. This classification uses two dimensions of employees' involvement into decision making for classification of the types of organizational culture of modern business systems. First dimension: interest of business manager in involvement of employees into the process of decision making. Second dimension: employees' inclination for participation in the process of making of managerial decisions. The factors that influence these dimensions are determined.

Conclusions: Connection between organizational culture and specifics of decision making in modern business systems according to the criterion of employees' involvement in decision making is determined. The minimal level of involvement envisages independent decision making by business manager without participation of employees. In this case, a lot of problems of the business system remain unsolved and possibilities remain unused. Resource intensity of decision making is the highest, and their practical implementation is complicated by employees' dissatisfaction, but this process is conducted very quickly. The medium level of involvement envisages either collective discussion, but decision making by business manager, or collection of feedback by business manager with low interest in it from employees. In this case, resource intensity of decision making is lower, and decisions could be made and implemented faster. The highest level of involvement is connected to collective decision making by employees and business manager. This allows determining problems and using possibilities of the business system with minimal resources. Though the duration of the process of decision making is the highest, solutions are implemented quickly due to employees' support.

Originality/value: The determined specifics show the necessity for considering the influence of the organizational culture on specifics of the process of decision making in modern business systems. It is substantiated that no type of organizational culture of modern business systems according to the criterion of employees' involvement in decision making can provide a guarantee of decisions' optimality. The directions of managing the organizational culture depending on the set criteria (completeness, speed, resource intensity) of decision making are recommended.

Narrow, managerially centered notions of organizational culture remain hegemonic, marginalizing richer, anthropological approaches as well as efforts to understand how the beliefs and practices of organizations are fundamentally shaped by the wider societal dynamics within which they are embedded. In this paper, the authors draw upon recent efforts to explore the interface of scholarship on practice and the institutional logics perspective to highlight the utility of a practice-driven institutional approach to the study of organizational culture that brings society back in. Empirically, the authors present a longitudinal case study of a Chinese private enterprise, and analyze how the unfolding dynamics of a strong community logic increasingly affected by a rising market logic, shaped the formation of political coalitions internally and externally as organizational members aimed to maintain truces between the push and pull of logics over a period of 22 years. Through an analysis of seven episodes that we conceptualize as “cultural encounters,” the authors find that a combination of compartmentalization and overall integration of logics contributes to provisional truces, and that people in the same cohort who share common geographic socialization are more likely to form allies. Our aim is to encourage future scholars to study how societal beliefs and practices work their way into organizations in a variety of explicit as well as more mundane, hidden ways.

This research highlights the scenarios that might serve as a strategic vision to describe a future beyond the current library, one which both guides provosts and creates a map for the transformation of human resources and technology in the university research libraries. The scenarios offer managerial leaders an opportunity to envision new roles for librarians and staff which brings a much needed focus on the development of human resources as well as a thought-stream to understand decisions which effectively and systematically move the organization toward a strategic vision.

These scenarios also outline possible future directions research libraries could take by focusing on perspectives from library directors, provosts, and administrators for human resources. The four case study scenarios introduce potential future roles for librarians and highlight the unsustainability of the current scholarly communications model as well as uncertain factors related to the political, social, technical, and demographic issues facing campuses. Given the changes institutions face, scenarios allow directors to include more uncertainty when developing and articulating a vision. These scenarios may start a discussion, before a strategic planning process, to sharpen the evaluations and measures necessary to monitor achievements that define the value of the library.

Organizational identity provides an increasingly large number of researchers with a theoretical lens for examining current transformations of the university. The primary objective of this chapter is to report an extensive, systematic overview of the literature published on the subject between 1972 and 2014. The analysis of 120 empirical studies reveals a literature which is rich but dispersed, in theoretical, epistemological, and methodological terms. Thriving since the 2000s, it is mainly American but increasingly globalized. After identifying six main research categories according to the distinctions found in the organizational identity literature, we propose a series of avenues for discussion bearing on the status of identity as an indicator of changes at work in the university, their level and depth.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the organizational reconfiguration of offshoring on firms’ strategies. A consequence of offshoring is the need to reintegrate the geographically relocated organizational activities into a coherent organizational architecture. In order to do this, firms need a high degree of architectural knowledge, which is typically gained through learning by doing. We therefore argue that firms with more offshoring experience are more likely to include organizational objectives in their offshoring strategies. We develop and find support for this hypothesis using a mixed-method approach based on a qualitative case study and comprehensive data from the Offshoring Research Network. These findings contribute to research on the organizational design and architecture of offshoring and the dynamics of organizational architectures.

Based on the assumption that the identity and self-understanding of an academic discipline determines how it conceptualizes different domains of social reality, including how it imports and/or exports concepts from or to other disciplines, this chapter presents some of the findings of a major ongoing comparative and cross-disciplinary study of how five key concepts within the combined fields of crisis management and reputation management are applied in three different disciplinary contexts. In this chapter, however, the focus is on just one of these concepts: the concept of reputation.