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INTRODUCTION
The continuing interest in the concept of culture suggests a change in emphasis in the study of organizations. The focus on culture is associated with a stress on the subjective realm, and a turn to interpretive and qualitative approaches in sociology, and organization sociology in particular (Hofstede, 1986, p. 254). The rise of organizational symbolism should involve the introduction into organization theory of formerly remote disciplines, including history, anthropology, and literary criticism (Turner, 1990, p. 83). The field of organizational behavior is "notoriously ahistorical," and the concept of culture has been welcomed in the hope that it might induce "a historical perspective" (Nord, 1985, p. 191). A "historically-informed" emphasis on culture should make organizational behavior "relatively less reliant on the empirical analytical sciences and more dependent on the historical-hermeneutic sciences" (p. 191). "History as a mode of inquiry in organizational life" has even been claimed as "a liberating activity," dereifying social structures and revealing choices to organization members (Barrett & Srivastva, 1991, p. 248).
Since most definitions of culture in organizations have a "temporal dimension," this should have opened up opportunities for historians to contribute a long-term perspective to organization studies (Dellheim, 1986, p. 11). However, these promises have not been fulfilled; history, hermeneutically inclined or otherwise, and organization studies have not been drawn together significantly through the concept of culture.
This paper suggests possible reasons for the lack of integration between corporate culture and business history, and then attempts to rectify this by offering a case study of the history of the invention of a culture by Cadbury, the British chocolate confectionery manufacturer. Although mostly published sources are cited, the study is based on extensive research in the historical collection held by the company. In the absence of extensive historical research, corporate culture writers have usually imposed upon the histories of companies a story about the founder creating a culture. The data for this case study was approached with great skepticism for such a narrative.
CORPORATE CULTURE AND BUSINESS HISTORY
ORGANIZATION STUDIES AND HISTORY
Several reasons can be suggested for the failure of organization studies to incorporate history into the concept of culture. They are similar to the problems encountered by sociologists in their efforts to erode the distinction between sociology and history....