The ‘slippery’ concept of ‘culture’ in projects: towards alternative theoretical possibilities embedded in project practice

Abstract

This paper is conceptual in nature. It begins with a critique of the slippery use of the concept of culture in organization studies and management practice and aims to illuminate problems with mainstream approaches to managing cultural differences and designing corporate culture as a panacea to organizational diversity, lack of intra-organizational cooperation or employee resistance. By contrasting the ‘culture as a variable’ approach with an understanding of culture as social-relational practice, as a meaning-making process, the paper expounds the importance of taking into account the fluidity of cultural categories, and the context-dependent and historydependent nature of self-identification and self-consciousness in the attempts to improve performance and collaboration. The paper draws on a position known as process organization studies from which projects are ontologically understood as social settings in a permanent state of creation, evolution and emergence through complex processes of relating between interdependent members. Cultural management, as a form of control technology, is then challenged by illuminating the inevitable, on-going shifting identity positioning of individuals through symbolic, conversational and power relating to organizations. The products of these relational processes are never fully predictable over time and across space. Specific methodological approaches for addressing the questions of how we get to know culture and how we study culture as practised in project organizations are the suggested and discussed. These include social constructionist perspectives, qualitative methods and interpretative accounts from, for example, ethnography, in unravelling the dynamics of, for example, identity (re-) constructions. The role and skills of meaning-makers as opposed to cultural designers and managers are discussed. The paper concludes with some provocations around emerging ethical considerations, ultimately questioning whether project culture is manageable, consensual and could be manipulated.