The Cultural Approach to Organizations

Chapter 19 is all about Clifford Geertz and Michael Pacanowsky's research on culture in organizations. Geertz uses the metaphor of culture as a web. Griffin explains that, “in order to travel across the strands toward the center of the web, an outsider must discover the common interpretations that hold the web together.” ( Griffin p. 250). Culture is made up of many things, or strands. These strands can be made form the language we speak to the field we work in, all of the strands make up our web. Geertz is an anthropologist who has studied remote culures. Geertz says that culture is not defined as the arts or traditions but is much more complex and vague. All societies have subcultures within their culture. I looked at the subcultures to mean the “cliques” that make up the whole society.