ABSTRACT
Organizations at any given time manifest, as we learned earlier, the three dimen-
sions of integration, differentiation, and fragmentation (Martin, 1992, 2002;
Martin, Frost, & O’Neill, 2006). Perhaps boundary objects might therefore be
conceived as putting forth integrative discourses that strive to resonate with
what organization members share in order to negotiate those members’ differen-
tiated values, practices, and subcultures in a way that, when prompted by an
integrative exigence, can produce temporary and issue-specific consensus amidst
the change, confusion, and ambiguity of organizational fragmentation. Thus,
to illuminate the integrative dimension of the Sipo Technical Matters Group,
we have so far followed Longo’s (1998) cultural research methodology by first
exploring the historical and cultural contexts that the killers broadly shared-
the long history of religious and economic anti-Semitism and modern history
of racial anti-Semitism and German cultural touchstones about the natures of
human activity and community as these were subsequently picked up and
expressed in the Nazi doctrines of Volksgemeinschaft and Führerprinzip. These
historical and cultural contexts are salient, we discovered, because organizations
are open systems that absorb larger societal discourses and then shape local
versions. Next we investigated the differentiating dimension of the Sipo
Technical Matters Group by exploring the varieties of values, practices, and
subcultures its members inhabited-the differentiation between ideological
Party followers and career police professionals and the myriad organizational
divisions of the SS and its Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).
