Methodological alignment in qualitative research of organisational culture

Research has long established that organisational culture is an important aspect of organi- sational life (Kieser, 1997), and organisational culture has evolved as a strong paradigm in organisational studies. However, the existing literature has accommodated different views about fundamentals such as defining organisational culture and how we think it works (Martin, 2002). While some scholars consider culture as an independent variable, others believe that organisational culture is not a variable, which can be easily captured, but is the organisation itself including its identity, which is constantly created and recreated (Smircich, 1983). In addition, some scholars believe that organisational culture can be captured as ‘us’ (our values, beliefs, assumptions) and ‘them’ (the values of others) (Anthony, 1994). Presence of subcultures means that it is difficult to define organisational culture as an organisation-wide phenomenon, which is clear and known and can establish harmony and coherence in the organisation. The divergent views on organisational culture and the way the knowledge about culture has been structured have led to ‘ambiguity’ and ‘fragmentation’ of the organisational culture phenomena (Martin, 2002).
Qualitative research on the relationships between organisational culture and management systems have used different lenses based on different conceptualisations of such relationships. This has created distinct pockets of studies with different ontological and epistemological assumptions. Therefore, qualitative research on organisational culture can be characterised as diverse, disparate, and controversial (Alvesson, 2012). These diverse approaches to conceptu- alise organisational culture mean that there is a need to systematically capture methodological approaches used for studying organisational culture including ontological and epistemological assumptions, data collection and analysis methods. In this chapter, we are presenting different approaches and the methods used to study organisational culture, which may assist organi- sational culture researchers to select appropriate design and methods for the purpose of their unique studies of organisational culture.