ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, culture entered the lexicon of organisations. With the development and popularisation of the concept of ‘corporate culture’, starting largely with Peters and Waterman’s massively successful book In Search of Excellence (1982), what was formerly a relatively unknown notion has now become part of the everyday discourse of organisations from the shop floor to the boardroom. Spawning a plethora of both popular texts and academic treatises, organisational and corporate culture have come of age as a means to understand, manage and change organisational behaviour. Indeed, the situation is now one where ‘culture’ is accorded a prime position in terms of how contemporary organisational life is governed (du Gay 1996a), and for senior executives culture is now most commonly understood as a lever that can be pulled in order to enhance organisational performance. For many businesses this has meant a preoccupation with ‘the consideration of culture and emotions as decisive factors influencing both individual behaviour and enterprise results’ (Ibarra-Colado 2002: 165). Further, these changes in the government of organisational lives are significant in terms of their potential effects on the personal identity of those at work (du Gay 1996b).
