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Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain
JOANNE MARTIN. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002. 402 pp. ISBN 0803972954 (pbk)
I like this book. Initially I was not sure I was going to, from the impressions given by its appearance, or more accurately from the textual information on the cover. The cover is classy-cream with black text and chocolate brown features-but it also says that it is part of the Sage 'Foundations for Organizational Science' series. I have a big problem with putting 'organizations' and 'science' together in the same sentence, and an even bigger one in then treating the notion of 'organizational science' as a taken-for-granted category on which to base a series of books. The series, we are told inside the book by the publishers, is designed to support
the development of students, faculty and prospective organizational science professionals through the publication of texts authored by leading organizational scientists. Each volume provides a highly personal, hands-on introduction to a core topic or theory and challenges the reader to explore promising avenues for future theory development and empirical application, (p. ii, series introduction)
Relatively innocuous then perhaps?
Reading further, we find David Whetten, the series editor, contributing a short introduction to this series and giving an explanation of its aims that makes it seem more acceptable to those suspicious of scientific claims. The intentions are to encourage authors to 'write the way they teach' and to frame the book as an extension of their teaching notes, 'rather than as the expansion of a handbook chapter'; to pass on their 'craft knowledge'; to share 'insider tips'; and to make a complex subject comprehensible (p. x). These are laudable aims, and although I do not know if Martin totally achieves the first aim, since I have not seen her teach, she certainly achieves all the others very successfully. Her primary goal for the book is 'to open readers' minds about new ways to think about and study cultures so that culture can be understood in different and deeper ways' (p. 13). She adds a particularly encouraging codicil to this in which she says that the book seeks to show 'why people disagree so vehemently about these issues . . . (and that she) . . . hopes to entice...