CULTURE, POWER AND STRUCTURE OF ORGANIZATION: AN INTEGRATIVE RESEARCH FRAMEWORK

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to develop an integrative research framework for analyzing the relationships between organizational culture, power, and structure. Organization is observed as a configuration of mutually consistent components, so the main research question emerges: How organizational components impact each other? In this paper, the answer to this question is given through the analysis of the interrelationships between organizational culture, power and structure by applying the metaphor of the hologram. We started from the position that an organization must be understood as a state arising from the processes at both individual and organizational levels. The organization members’ needs for affiliation, power and achievement generate psychosocial, political and functional actions at the individual level, as well as the same processes at the organizational level. These processes generate organizational culture, power and structure as elements of the organization. However, the key idea is that culture, power and structure are derived from the wholeness of organizational processes and therefore contain each other as a kind of hologram. As a result, culture legitimizes power and structure, power instrumentalizes culture and structure, while structure institutionalizes culture and power. The paper shows practical implications of an integrative research framework both through defining further directions for research into relationships between culture, power and structure, as well as through showing to the management of organizations why it is necessary to understand and take into account the mutual consistency between culture, power, and structure.