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Another cultural trend which appeared in management studies and was inspired by the humanities was postmodernism. Postmodernists took a far-reaching critical look at the functionalist, universalist and objectivist cultural approaches. They proposed the concept of non-fundamentalist discourse based on methodological anarchism. Flagship postmodern ideas, such as deconstruction, simulacrum and metanarration, have gained favour in management. Some authors also used strong metaphors from organisational culture, such as theatre, rhizome and the panopticon45. Following the precursors of postmodernism and postmodern philosophers such as M. Foucault, P. Feyerabend, R. Rorty and J.F. Lyotard, a critique of objectivist efforts at cultural research was undertaken and, simultaneously, the ideas of cultural imperialism of modern science were highlighted. Postmodernism is an anti-methodological trend and of the few attempts to use postmodern methods, deconstruction and gloss were found to be essay writings rather than works of science. Some authors, previously interested in anti-functionalist, non-fundamentalist approaches to organisational culture, became postmodernists, including S. Clegg, G. Burrell, R. Cooper, B. Czarniawska-Jorges, M. Kostera, M.J. Hatch, P. Engholm, D.M. Boje, R.P. Gephart Jr and T.J. Thatchenkery46. In addition, many researchers and practitioners used metaphors and other concepts embedded in postmodernism. From the point of view of management sciences, postmodernism as a whole has not become a major trend. Nonetheless, it is worth noting its presence in management’s cultural trends. Postmodernism in management is often confused with the interpretative approach and the critical trend. However, the differences are very significant and affect both the epistemological and the methodological sphere, and there will be more discussion of the distinction between non-functional paradigms in cultural studies in subsequent chapters. Radical postmodernism has been sharply criticised, yet in most cases with a well-founded critique on the part of the scientific community of its irrationalism, epistemological relativism, lack of scientific ←24 | 25→rigour and vagueness of the concept47. The result of this is the slow fading away of postmodernism in science, including the cultural discourse. Some researchers believe that the loss of importance of post-modernism also marks an increase in the importance of the realistic approach to culture in management48.
The most recent research approach to cultural processes in the organisation is the critical view (Critical Management Studies – CMS), although of course its roots can be traced back to the ancient past. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx described the capitalist exploitation of workers in factories and the bourgeois culture created around it. CMS representatives derive the achievements of the Frankfurt School and radical feminism directly from neo-Marxism. When presenting the metaphor of organisation, G. Morgan interprets it as a ‘mental prison’ and mentions a number of topics critical to the dominant culture of business: opposition to dehumanisation, the lack of responsibility, the exploitation of poorer countries by richer countries, as well as the utilisation of natural resources in a predatory manner and the destruction of ecosystems49. According to the representatives of the critical trend, all these problematic cases of the exploitive culture of modern business are systemically conditioned and not purely pathological. Culture in the view of the radical trend is a tool for wielding power. The first author to write about the issue of organisational culture from the critical point of view was H. Willmott, who in 1993 described organisational culture as a kind of ideology, a ‘false consciousness’, psychomanipulation and social engineering aimed at maintaining the status quo in the form of the exploitation of workers50. Since then, publications by M. Alvesson, D. Knights, J. Brewis, J. Gavin and A. Prasad have further developed this critical look at culture in management51.
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Obviously, this analysis does not exhaust the richness of all schools and topics of cultural discourse in organisations and management. For example, the development of the concept of organisational identity, cognitive organisation, organisational learning and many other aspects of management which can be regarded as cultural has been omitted. They have been assigned to one of the schools by default – for example, organisational identity is an important element of the interpretative understanding of organisational culture. Nor has any analysis of the prospects for the development of the cultural trend been carried out, because it is going to be the subject of the next part of the monograph. Taking into account the simplified nature of the analysis presented, the development of cultural afterthought may still be sorted in the form of eight trends presented below:
1. Preculturalism, encompassing the period from the birth of the management sciences to the creation of the school of social relations, focusing on selected, narrowly understood cultural organisational processes (motivation, esprit de corps), not theorizing on the subject of culture in the strict sense.
2. The school of social relations, which was founded in the 1930s and developed over two decades, which put socio-cultural issues at the heart of the management sciences, yet at the same time did not include explicit afterthought on culture.
3. The work environment trend, developed in the 1950s and 1960s, which grew out of research at the Glacier factory operated by E. Jacques and proposed a narrow understanding of organisational culture in management as a specific ‘organisational climate’.
4. Comparative and cross-cultural communication perspectives, developed in the 1960s, which are also an important area of research contemporarily. These analyse the influence of cultures of different societies on an organisation’s management processes.
5. The universalist understanding of organisational cultural perspectives, related to the huge expansion of research, publications and popularisation of papers in the 1970s, and especially the 1980s, in which organisational culture is understood as an internal variable that affects the efficiency of the organisation and is subject to managerial control through the use of management tools (known as the functionalist paradigm).
6. Cultural interpretivism, developed in the 1980s as a reaction to the universalist trend, which assumed an understanding of culture as a core metaphor.
7. The postmodernism which emerged in management in the mid-1980s, using the assumptions of radical epistemological relativism and cultural relativism.
8. The critical view of culture in management stemming from CMS, which emerged in organisational discourse due to the 1993 publication of H. Willmott’s work and was focused on a critique of the instrumentalist understanding of organisational culture, at the same time proposing the creation of emancipating cultures.
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