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Understanding organisational culture as a trait theory

Published Online:March 12, 2012pp 199-220https://doi.org/10.1504/EJIM.2012.045797

Abstract

A generic model of organisational culture is developed, which distinguishes between the internal environment (organisational culture, strategy, structure and operations) and external environment (legitimisation environment and task environment) of an organisation and suggests a set of five bipolar traits to characterise the normative personality characteristics of the organisation. The presented generic model of organisational culture integrates so far separate classes of organisation theory and has the potential to serve as a basis for the identification of types of corporate culture and their dysfunctions.

Keywords

organisational culture, generic theory, corporate normative personality, knowledge cybernetics, organisational behaviour, organisation theory platform

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