Organizing consists of making other people work. We do this by manip ulating symbols: words, exhortations, memos, charts, signs of status. We expect these symbols to have the desired effects on the people con cerned. The success of our organizing activities depends on whether the others do attach to our symbols the meanings we expect them to. Whether or not they do so is a function of what I have sometimes called "the programs in their minds" -their learned ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting-in short, a function of their culture. The assumption that organizations could be culture-free is...

Organizing consists of making other people work. We do this by manip- ulating symbols: words, exhortations, memos, charts, signs of status. We expect these symbols to have the desired effects on the people con- cerned. The success of our organizing activities depends on whether the others do attach to our symbols the meanings we expect them to. Whether or not they do so is a function of what I have sometimes called "the programs in their minds" -their learned ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting-in short, a function of their culture. The assumption that organizations could be culture-free...