ABSTRACT
The questionnaire and the empirical results on organizational cultures in Germany capture the elements of liberalism versus illiberalism from a Karl Popperian point of view. The cluster of organicist 'Clans' reflects the traditional German culture, the 'Team' cluster reflects a modernized Germany influenced by post-war and post-1968 developments and Westernization. Nevertheless, even in the latter cluster, the need for both cohesion and autonomy at work is simultaneously upheld. It turns out that the organicism dimension has no sufficient convergent validity and splits into two dimensions that can be best labeled 'low versus high social cohesion' and 'equality versus inequality'. Put differently, in medium-sized manufacturing firms in Germany, there seems to be no contradiction between autonomy and social cohesion. This is meaningful for the relationship between national and organizational culture. Applied to organizational cultures, firms need to adopt a number of values, or at least represent or claim them to the outside.
