Developing Managers: The Functional, the Symbolic, the Sacred and the Profane
Organization Studies · 2000 · Volume 21 · Issue 4
Abstract
This paper offers a new perspective on international management by examining the role of culture and management development in creating international expertise, a sense of identity and realizing organizational control. A critical analysis of the culture transmission and management development philosophy and practice of a UK-based transnational reveals how the transmission of culture accomplishes management development objectives, while management development itself serves as a vehicle for the transmission of the desired corporate values. This recursiveness is sustained by a corporate ideology that urges the creation of integrative values and, in turn, is legitimized by the quest for favorable functional and symbolic consequences.
Keywords
management training and development, culture, ideology, functionalism, symbolism
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