Summary Sociology of
Organisations endterm
Watson Ch 4 (94-121);
Watson Ch 6 (171-194);
Watson Ch 9
Fang;
Zuboff;
Bovens & Zouridis
Dobbin
Rangan
Sennett
Fang
The article discusses three major themes:
o The continuity of management problems over time
o Differences in management problems across countries
o What is Asian management?
The Hofstede paradigm is based on six assumptions
o First, the complex phenomenon of culture can be tackled through simplification and
stereotyping.
o Second, nation-state or nationality is adopted as the basic unit of analysis.
o Third, cultural difference is the focus.
o Fourth, cultures can be analysed in terms of four or five cultural dimensions along which each
national culture is given a fixed indexing
o Fifth, Hofstede emphasizes that value determines and prevails over behavior, not the other
way around.
o Sixth and finally, culture is stable over time because values are difficult to change over time.
Hofstede’s onion:
While the outer layers (symbols, heroes, rituals) of the “onion” come and go, the core (values) of the
“onion” stays firm.
Values shape symbols, heroes, and rituals; symbols, heroes, and rituals (behavioral elements or
hardware of culture) may change, but values (the software of culture) will not.
Ying and Yang:
o In Asia, it is natural to have both “black” and “white”—the opposites—existing side by side
and even within each other, allowing the situation, context, and time to determine what is
appropriate.
o When asked whether they are feminine or masculine, whether they are collectivistic or
individualistic, and whether they are reserved or expressive, for example, Asians would often
be confused because they believe they can be both depending on situation, context and time.
, o Yin represents female energy (the moon, night, water, weakness, darkness, mystery, softness,
and passivity), whereas Yang stands for male energy (the sun, day, fire, strength, brightness,
clearness, hardness, and activity).
o Yin Yang suggests that opposites contain within them the seed of each other and together
form a dynamic and changing unity.
o They cannot survive without each other, and they complement each other, depend on each
other, exist in each other, give birth to each other, and succeed each other at different points
in time, all in the process of ceaseless change and transformation balanced culture
Contrasts between Fang and Hofstede
o Asians are routinely described as collectivistic people in the Hofstede paradigm, including
Hofstede (2007). But from the Yin Yang point of view, Asian people, like all other people, are
collectivists in some situations and contexts but the same people are individualists in some
other situations and contexts
o Hofstede (2007) sees culture as basically unchanged over time because he places value at the
core of culture and sees value as unchanged over time. However, according to Fang, onions
do not have a hard core in real life; value—the “core” of the “onion”—can be understood as a
relative and changing construct.
We also see this in the Yin and Yang; Change and paradox are deep-seated Asian
values. Yin and Yang, water and fire, the moon and the sun, and so forth, are waning
and waxing, coming and going, opening and closing, all in the process of ceaseless
change and transformation.
o According to Hofstede, the changes of symbols, heroes and rituals in china does not have any
impact on changes of Chinese values.
In Hofstede’s “onion” model of culture, symbols, heroes, and rituals are not core
elements in culture; they are coming and going, emerging and disappearing.
However, the values “are about what is evil and what is good, dirty and clean,
immoral and moral, irrational and rational” (Hofstede), we have to be honest to
ourselves and we must have to admit that what is evil and what is good in today’s
China DIFFERS radically from what was evil and what was good in Mao’s China
(1949–1976).
o Cultural differences are seen as a problem to Hofstede. However, Fang says that when
different cultures (like Yin and Yang) “collide” with each other, how hard this collisistion
might be, this could help inspire and ensures cultural learning and management learning
processes taking place on both sided, which probably leads to integration of both cultures
into a new hybrid culture.
o Hofstede states that solutions to management problems are country-specific (this is because
of his static and bipolarized vision of culture), while Fang (Yin & Yang point of view) states
that different and even paradoxical cultures can coexist within each other. They can also
inspire each other.
Ocean metaphor of culture: the culture we see at this moment does not represent the totality and the
entire life process of that culture
Zuboff
Companies and transactions are mediated through computers instead of what the users say or do. It’s
only about capturing and converting it into data.
Data companies like Google are formally indifferent to what users do, it’s only about data for them
The power shift Zuboff describes in his article is about how surveillance capitalism is about ‘big data’
these days, instead of fundamental components
Surveillance capitalism can be seen as a form of capitalism
Bovens & Zouridis
According to Bovens & Zouridis, the street-level bureaucracy has made a turn into what we could call a
‘screen-level bureaucracy’.
In a bureaucratic organization, the implementing officials were directly in contact with citizens, while
these days the contacts run through a computer screen.
