ABSTRACT
The general point of the significance of "culture" could hardly escape the least-assiduous student in a whole gamut of introductory versions of academic courses—social psychology, delinquency, social organization, and management, among others. Consider the danger of In Search of Excellence's treatment of culture. The conventional view stresses that cultures of efficient organizations can be good, bad, or indifferent when viewed from a broader value perspective. In the usual formulation, cultures can be efficient and/or effective, with the criteria in the first case being narrow input/output ratios and in the latter case emphasizing broad social and moral evaluations. Thus the culture of the Mafia or Cosa Nostra was "strong" and, at least for a substantial period, that system was efficient but not effective by conventional social and legal mores. In Search of Excellence neither proposes that a culture is a culture, nor does it specify the detailed properties of normatively appropriate cultures.
