ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature of cultural schemas and models by describing the relationship between them and why the distinction matters, and outlines a schema-model hierarchy that is analytically and pragmatically important for research and practice. It presents the literature on schemas in organizations, including that which relates to functional grounding, and shows how schemas constitute culture by providing an underlying ‘logic’ or core frame of reference for meaning and sensemaking. The chapter suggests that hierarchical structuring is a feature of all schemas and models. Schemas are organized according to how useful they are as interpretive devices, and how motivating they are. Primary schemas organize, constrain, and provide the structuring logic for a community’s entire system of cultural practice and meaning. A point of departure between the cognitive anthropological literature on schemas and the management cognition literature is on the question of implicitness.
