A counterculture can seroe some useful functions for the dominant culture, such asarticulating the foundations between appropriate and inappropriate behaviorand providing a safe haven for the development of innovative ideas.

Organizational Cultureand Counterculture:An Uneasy Symbiosis

Joanne MartinCaren Siehl

our sentences capture the essence of much ofthe recent organizational culture research.First, cultures offer an interpretation of aninstitution's history that members can use todecipher how they will be expected to behavein the future. Second, cultures can generatecommitment to corporate values or manage-ment philosophy so that employees feel theyare working for something they believe in.Third, cultures serve as organizational con-trol mechanisms, informally approving orprohibiting some patterns of behavior. Final-ly, there is the possibility, as yet unsupportedby conclusive evidence, that some types of

organizational cultures are associated withgreater productivity and profitability.

Most of this research shares a singleset of simplifying assumptions. First, the per-spective of the organization's top manage-ment is assumed because the functionsstudied serve to (1) transmit top manage-ment's interpretations of the meaning ofevents throughout the organization, (2) gen-erate commitment to their practices and pol-icies, and (3) help them control behavior inaccordance with their objectives. Second, thefunctions of culture are portrayed as integra-tive, unifying the diverse elements of an or-

52Organizational Dynamics, Autumn 1982. © 1983, Periodicals Division,

American Management Associations. AU rights reserved. 0O90-26X6/83/0015-0052/SO2.O0/0

ganization. Third, organizational culture istreated as a monolithic phenomenon — oneculture to a setting. Finally, many of thesestudies implicitly assume or explicitly assertthat culture can be managed by using direct,intentional actions not unlike those used inother management tasks.

This particular set of simplifyingassumptions may blind us to some importantaspects of organizational culture. For exam-ple, studies of blue-collar workers' practices,such as "hassling" ratebusters, clearly indicatethat cultural mechanisms can be used toundermine top-management objectives. Cul-tures can serve differentiating rather than in-tegrating functions by, for example, express-ing conflicts among parts of a society. Insteadof being monolithic phenomena, organiza-tional cultures are composed of various in-terlocking, nested, sometimes conflictingsubcultures.

Finally, it is likely that cultural de-velopment, like other aspects of organiza-tional functioning, is not as responsive to di-rect managerial attempts at control as manywould like to believe. It may be that culturescannot be straightforwardly created or man-aged by individuals. Instead, cultures maysimply exist and managers may capitalize oncultural effects they perceive as positive orminimize those perceived as negative. Per-haps the most that can be expected is that amanager can slightly modify the trajectory ofa culture, rather than exert major controlover the direction of its development.

This article assumes that culturalmechanisms can underline as well as supportthe objectives of the firm's top management.We argue that in addition to serving integra-tive functions, cultures can express conflictsand address needs for differentiation amongorganizational elements. Instead of treatingculture as a monolithic phenomenon, we ex-plore a counterculture's uneasy symbiotic re-lationship with the rest of an organization.Finally, we address the relationship between

cultural development and managerial actionby asking what a leader does, inadvertentlyor advertently, that seems to impact the de-velopment of a counterculture.

To examine a subculture in somedepth, a few conceptual distinctions areneeded. Edgar Schein has distinguished threelevels of culture: basic assumptions, valuesor ideology, and artifacts (such as special jar-gon, stories, rituals, dress, and decor). Wewould add a fourth category, managementpractices. These are familiar managementtasks, such as training, performance apprais-al, allocation of rewards, hiring, and soforth. (Practices may or may not include ar-tifacts. For example, a training program fornew employees may be an occasion for tellingorganizational stories and may concludewith a ceremony.) Artifacts and practices ex-press values, which may also be expressed asa corporate ideology or management phi-losophy. Underlying those values are evendeeper assumptions, which rest at a precon-scious level of awareness. Schein argues per-suasively that because assumptions are takenfor granted, they are difficult to study exceptthrough the use of long-term observationand in-depth, clinical interviewing tech-niques. (See the article by Alan L. Wilkins onpage 24 of this issue for a description of sucha technique.) Because of the methodologicaldifficulty of studying assumptions, we re-strict our attention to artifacts, practices, andvalues, reserving some tentative speculationsabout assumptions for the concludingdiscussion.

Next, a distinction needs to bedrawn between an organization's dominantculture and the various subcultures thatmight coexist with it. A dominant culture ex-presses, through artifacts, core values thatare shared by a majority of the organization'smembers. At least three types of subculturesare conceivable: enhancing, orthogonal, andcountercultural. An enhancing subculturewould exist in an organizational enclave in 53

54

which adherence to the core values of thedominant culture would be more ferventthan in the rest of the organization. In anorthogonal subculture, the members wouldsimultaneously accept the core values of thedominant culture and a separate, unconflict-ing set of values particular to themselves. Forexample, an accounting division and researchand development (R&D) department mayboth endorse the values of their firm's domi-nant culture, while retaining separate sets ofvalues related to their occupational identities,such as "going by the numbers" for the ac-counting department and "valuing innova-tion" in the R&D department.

The third type of subculture, acounterculture, is the focus of this article. Wepropose that some core values of a counter-culture should present a direct challenge tothe core values of a dominant culture. Thusa dominant culture and a countercultureshould exist in an uneasy symbiosis, takingopposite positions on value issues that arecritically important to each of them. This ar-ticle explores the adequacy of this proposi-tion by collecting artifacts from a dominantculture and a counterculture and determiningwhat values those artifacts express. We ex-pect that some artifacts from a countercul-ture will ridicule a subset of the dominantculture's values, while other counterculturalartifacts will express support for an altema-tive set of values.

To find a setting in which we canstudy this issue, we need to know what typesof organizational conditions are likely to giverise to a counterculture. Ruth Leeds Love'sdiscussion of the absorption of protest offersa solution. She posits that organizations thatare strongly centralized, but permit a decen-tralized diffusion of power, are likely tospawn what she terms a "nonconforming en-clave." An organizational member challengessome aspect of the dominant culture. If thechallenger is a charismatic leader. Love pro-poses that the organization will absorb the

loanne Martin is associate professor of organi-zational behavior at the Graduate School ofBttsiness, Stanford University. Her research cur-rently involves two different topics: organiza-tional culture and perceptions of injustice. Herrecent culture publications include: The Unique-ness Paradox in Organizational Stories," co-authored with Martha Feldman, Mary }oHatch, and Sim Sitkin (Administrative ScienceQuarterly, September 1983): "Truth or Corpo-rate Propaganda: The Value of a Good WarStory," co-authored with Melanie E. Powers, inOrganizational Symbolism (JAI Press, in press);and "Stories and Scripts in Organizational Set-tings" in Cognitive Social Psychology (Elsevier-North Holland, lnc, 1982). She has also con-ducted research and published many articles oninjustice.

Currently Dr. Martin is studying charismaticleaders and the birth of cultures in four newmicrocomputer companies. She is also justcompleting, with Cathy Anterasian and CarenSiehl, an analysis of the relationship betweenculture and profitability in the Fortune 500.

Dr. Martin holds a B.A. in fine art fromSmith College, where she studied ivoodcuttingwith Leonard Baskin, and a Ph.D. in socialpsychology from Harvard University. HerPh.D. dissertation, which focused on labor's re-actions to various patterns of labor-manage-ment pay inequality, won prizes from theAmerican Psychological Association and SigmaXi. Between college and graduate school, sheworked as a project manager and, later, as di-rector of government marketing for McBer andCompany, formerly the Behavioral ScienceCenter of Sterling Institute, in Boston, Massa-chusetts and Washington, D.C.

potential for protest by giving the charismat-ic person limited power, some formal struc-tural autonomy, and a tadt mandate to

gather followers and create a nonconformingenclave. This strategy has advantages fromthe dominant coalition's point of view. If theenclave functions innovatively, within the in-stitution's latitude of tolerance, the institu-tion benefits. If not, the institution has iso-lated the deviance. The structural autonomyserves as a boundary, defining the limits ofacceptable behavior and possibly making theimwanted enclave easier to destroy.

To translate Love's proposition intothe terminology introduced above, a counter-culture should be most likely to arise in astrongly centralized institution that has per-mitted significant decentralization of author-ity to occur. The counterculture will be likelyto emerge within a structural boundary and,interestingly, it may well have a charismaticleader.

THE G M CASE: ORGANIZATIONAL SETTING

General Motors (GM) is a well-documentedcase that fits the description outlined byLove. The firm is strongly centralized in thatauthority and responsibility for financialcontrol and the long-range strategy of thefirm rest in the hands of the corporate head-quarters. Nevertheless the divisions, such asPontiac and Chevrolet, have considerable au-tonomy on operating issues. The rationalefor this structure was provided in former GMpresident and chairman of the board AlfredP. Sloan Jr.'s famous "Organizational Study"(released in 1920). The plan's description ofan inevitable tension between centralizationand decentralization accurately describes thefirm today.

One division of GM was headed forsome years by John DeLorean. This formalposition of leadership gave him visibility, re-sources, and power; these were apparentlyaugmented by such charismatic attributes aspersonal magnetism and dramatic flair. (Al-though DeLorean encotintered business and

Caren Siehl is currently completing her doctor-al degree in organizational behavior at theGraduate School of Business, Stanford Univer-sity. While at Stanford, she was awarded anNIMH fellowship for 1981-1983 and was se-lected to attend the 1982 Doctoral Consortiumin organizational behavior/organization theory.She earned her B.A. degree in French and lin-guistics at the University of Califomia at LosAngeles, from which she graduated summacum laude and was a member of Phi BetaKappa.

Before graduate school, she was employed byIBM in both marketing and customer supportfunctions. Her association with IBM led to aninterest in questions about corporate culture,including how cultures develop and the effectof the firm's founder on the corporate culture.

Siehl's interest in culture is evidenced in astudy of the transmission of cultural values byfirst-line and upper-level managers. The resultsof this study are detailed in "The Role of Sym-bolic Management: How Can Managers Effec-tively Transmit Organizational Culture?" Thispaper, co-authored with Joanne Martin, waspresented at the International Symposium onManagerial Behavior and Leadership Research,sponsored by N.A.T.O., Oxford, England, July1982. A revised version will be published inVolume 7 of the Leadership series published bythe Southern Illinois University Press, }. C.Hunt, D. Hosking, C. Schriesheim, and R.Steward (eds.).

In addition, Ms. Siehl's dissertation research,entitled "Cultural Sleight-of-Hand: The Illusionof Consistency," focuses on types of inconsis-tency within a culturv, both functional anddysfunctional, that are masked by the illusionof a cohesive, widely shared set of values. Be-ginning in September, 1983, she will be joiningthe faculty of the School of Business Adminis-tration, University of Southern California.

55

personal difficulties after his departure fromGM, this article focuses exclusively on hisyears with GM.)

THE GM CASE: PROCEDURE

In the first stage of this research, the availa-ble published literature on GM was sur/eyedand several present and former GM employ-ees interviewed by means of an open-endedformat. The objective of this stage of the re-search effort was to gain a relatively broadbase of knowledge about the corporation,with particular focus on the dominantculture.

In the second stage of the researcheffort, two views of the corporation were se-lected for an in-depth content analysis. Thefirst is a "corporate history" of GM, EdCray's Chrome Colossus: General Motorsand Its Times (McGraw-Hill, 1980). This bookwas selected for several reasons. It is recent.Unlike many others, it reports some informa-tion that is critical of the firm. It is compre-hensive and provides a detailed picture, par-ticularly of the firm's dominant culture. Thesecond view selected was J. R Wright's de-scription of DeLorean's activities. On AClear Day You Can See General Motors(Wright Enterprises, 1979). This book wasselected because it is the most thorough pub-lished account of DeLorean's activities atGM.

Because culture is a socially con-structed reality, it would be an exercise in fu-tility to try to capture a single "objective" pic-ture of a culture or subculture. UndoubtedlyCray and Wright have views of the issues andevents discussed below that are somewhatdifferent from others' views. It is impossibleto avoid bias in the perception of a sociallyconstructed reality; indeed, in some senses,that bias is the focus of this investigation.

One important limitation of these56 data sources merits mention. Cray and

Wright focus primarily on the activities ofrelatively high-ranking executives. They donot attempt to explore how these leaders' ac-tivities were perceived by their subordinates.Thus the present article focuses on leader ac-tivities rather than subordinate reactions tosuch activities.

THE GM CASE: CORE VALUES

Three related core values were repeatedlystressed (although terminology varied) in thevarious portrayals of the dominant culture atGM: respecting authority, fitting in, andbeing loyal. The decription below beginswith the dominant culture and describes thecultural artifacts that express these three corevalues. Next, the artifacts from DeLorean'sdivision are examined to determine if theyridicule the dominant culture's values or ex-press an alternative set of values, thus pro-viding evidence of an uneasy symbiotic rela-tionship between a dominant and a counter-culture. In this latter part of the article,DeLorean's activities are studied to determinehow they contribute, deliberately or inadver-tently, to the development of a counterculture.

Respecting Authority: Jargonand Rituals of Deference

One core value of GM's dominant culture in-volved the importance of paying deference tothe top corporate management. The speciallanguage or jargon used to refer to these exec-utives' domains and activities reflected thiscore value. The top team's offices were lo-cated in an I-shaped end of the fourteenthfloor of the huge GM headquarters building.Company jargon referred to this domain as"the fourteenth floor" and to these offices as"executive row," Apparently even GM's criticsspoke these words with some deference. Thehigh status of these top executives was alsoevident in the derogatory terms used to refer

to their subordinates. Each member of thetop management team was assigned a juniorexecutive, who acted as an assistant and sec-retary. These subordinates were called "dogrobbers," a term that originally referred to theservants in large households who were as-signed the undesirable task of cleaning updog droppings.

Another type of cultural artifact isa ritual — that is, an activity composed of aformalized or patterned sequence of eventsthat is repeated over and over again. GMhad many rituals that supported the core val-ue of deference owed authority. For exam-pie, subordinates were expected to meet theirsuperiors from out of town at the airport,carry their bags, pay their hotel and mealbills, and chauffeur them around day andnight. The higher the status of the superior,the more people would accompany him onthe flight and the larger the retinue thatwould wait at the airport. A chief engineerwould be met by at least one assistant en-gineer and perhaps a local plant official; a di-visional general manager would travel with atleast one executive from his office and wouldbe met at the airport by the local plant man-ager, the heads of the regional and zone salesoffices, and the local public relations direc-tor. If the chairman of the board decided tovisit field offices, dozens of people would beinvolved in accompanying and meeting him.

Adherence to the airport ritual wasnot merely a social nicety, as DeLoreanlearned to his dismay on an occasion when hefailed to meet his boss, Peter Estes, at the air-port. Estes stormed into DeLorean's shower,nearly tearing the shower door off its hinges,shouting with atypical rage, "Why the hellwasn't someone out to meet me at the airportthis morning? You knew I was coming, butnobody was there. Goddamnit, I served mytime picking up my bosses at the airport.Now you guys are going to do this for me"[from J. P. Wright's On a Clear Day You CanSee General Motors (Wright Enterprises,

1979)1. The airport ritual communicated themessage that no part of an executive's workwas more important than helping superiors,even by meeting their most mundane needs.It is hardly surprising that Estes was some-what perturbed, since DeLorean's refusal toadhere to the ritual clearly flouted a corevalue of GM's dominant culture and sent acrystal-clear message of disrespect for Estes'authority.

Fitting In: CommunicatingInvisibility by Visible Cues

It is no accident that few people could haverecognized GM's chairman of the boardThomas Murphy, although the faces of hispeers, such as Henry Ford of Ford and Wil-liam Paley of CBS, frequently graced the tele-vision screen, the front pages of newspapers,and the covers of news magazines. GM em-ployees who found themselves the object ofattention from the news media could expecta severe reprimand for disregarding anothercore value of GM's dominant culture: IdealGM employees were invisible people whocould fit in without drawing attention tothemselves.

The core value of invisibility wasexpressed through such visible cultural arti-facts as dress and decor. GM's dress norms inthe 1960s required a dark suit, a light shirt,and a muted tie. This was a slightly more lib-eral version of the famous IBM dress codethat required a dark suit, a sparkling whiteshirt, and a narrow blue or black tie. Whenall employees wear the same uniform, nosingle employee stands out.

Rules on office decor also expressedthe value of invisibility. Even on the four-teenth floor, office decor was standardized.The carpeting was a nondescript blue-greenand the oak paneling was a faded beige.When DeLorean was promoted to headquar-ters he requested brighter carpeting, sandingand restaining of the paneling, and some 57

more modem, functional furniture. The manin charge of office decoration was apologetic;but firm: "We decorate the offices only everyfew years. And they are all done the same.It's the same way with the furniture. MaybeI can get you an extra table or a lamp. . . "(Wright, op. cit.)

The invisible GM employee was a"team player." Executives signalled their will-ingness to be team players by engaging inpublic; symbolic acts of conformity. Many ofthese activities centered on the act of eating.When executives were in town, for example,they were expected to eat in the executivedining room, where conversation usuallyconsisted of bitching and office gossip, ap-parently irrelevant to serious business issues.

These meals were rituals. The exec-utives were isolated in a separate room atpredictable times. They said predictable sortsof things. Although at the manifest levelthese activities may have seemed irrelevant tothe company's business, at a deeper level theeating ritual communicated several impor-tant aspects of the value of fitting in. Partici-pation in the ritual required sacrifice of one'spersonal time that could have been spenthaving lunch with friends from outside GMor with one's family. When the conversationconcemed gossip or complaints about GM,the talkers were taking personal risks by ex-posing themselves as "back-biters" or "tale-tellers," while listeners were initiated into an"in-group" of confidants sharir\g privateknowledge. Precisely because topics of con-versation were private and in a sense forbid-den, the eating ritual was important. Itsignalled a willing sacrifice of time, an exten-sion of the company into the more privateand personal aspects of employees' lives, anda visible manifestation of willingness to fitin.

Failure to participate in the eatingritual was seen as a direct and unambiguouschallenge: "Why doesn't he have dinner with

58 the other executives? He's not acting like a

team player." (Wright, op. cit.) Costs of such achallenge were clear. Standard managementpractices punished those who failed to fit in.For example, performance appraisals werenot based solely on objective criteria —thework records of those who were promotedwere often inferior to those of people wholanguished in lower-level positions. Perfor-mance appraisals relied heavily on subjectivecriteria, which included an assessment of anemployee's private life. Top executives wereexpected to behave in a decorous fashion,avoid fads, and (at least publicly) maintainthe appearance of a stable married life. "He'snot a team player," was a frequent, and manytimes the only, obstacle to an executive'spromotion. (Wright, op. cit.)

Being Loyal: Inferring the DominantView from What Is Absent

Another core value central to the GM philos-ophy was loyalty to one's boss, which was aspecial case of loyalty to GM's management,which in tum was sometimes portrayed as aspedal case of loyalty to the country. For ex-ample, a top GM execnjtive testifying beforeCongress in the 1950s drew no distinction be-tween what was good for GM and what wasgood for the entire country Ifrom Ed Cray'sChrome Colossus: General Motors and ItsTimes (McGraw-Hill, 1980)].

One artifact of the dominant cul-ture that expressed the value placed on loyal-ty was the retirement dinner. At these din-ners, as at other rituals, the content of whatwas to be said and the sequence of events wasprescribed. A prototypical retirement dinnerbegan with a description of the retiree's earlybackground, perhaps with evocations of hishard-working parents and the elm-linedstFeets of his hometown. His first job, per-haps as a newsboy, would be recalled, fol-lowed by a brief recap of the halcyon days ofhis undergraduate career when, inevitably,he was a uniformed member, if not a star, of

some sport team. The retiree's history as aGM employee would then be recounted indetail, beginning with his fiist job, hopefully ahumble one that preserved the purity of theHoratio Alger aspect of his story. Next, hissteady (always steady) rise through the cor-porate hierarchy would be coimterpointedwith allusions to his charming wife and love-ly children.

Usually retirement dinner programsended with a few joking allusions to the re-tiree's idiosyncracies and a promise. The re-tiree and the company representativespledged continuing mutual respect, admira-tion, and loyalty. This pledge included a kindof proto-immortality, as the organizationpromised not to forget the retiree's invaluablecontributions and offered him a safe passageto life outside the corporation's doors.

If the content of what is said andthe sequence of what is done is prescribed ina ritual, then departure from these routinesshould cause consternation, as in DeLorean'sfailure to perform the airport ritual for hisboss. If the primary purpose of the retire-ment dinner at GM was to reward past andensure future loyalty, then reactions to devia-tions from the expected behavior pattemshould make this purpose clear.

A speaker at one GM retirementdinner committed two cardinal sins. He ad-mitted that the company had once been insevere trouble and he blamed the debacle onthe ill-considered decisions of a top GM exec-utive. Even the usually critical DeLorean wasshocked by the speaker's behavior, which hecriticized as a "vicious verbal attack," "un-called-for," and "vituperative." Others presentwere also dismayed, "shaking their heads andlooking puzzled," and ". . . caught betweenmodest surprise and downright embarrass-ment." Such a departure from the ritual pro-tocol was exceedingly rare: "It was the firsttime I had ever heard a General Motors exec-utive openly criticize another one, past orpresent, in front of corporate management."

(Wright, op. cit.) The critical speech was sodisruptive because it contraciicted the ritual'sbasic purpose: to celebrate retiring andpresent GM employees for their loyalty totop GM executives and to the firm as awhole.

One cultural artifact, not yet dis-cussed, is the organizational story. Suchstories are anecdotes, ostensibly true, about asequence of events drawn from the com-pany's history. The stars of an organizationalstory are company employees, and thestories' morals concem the firm's core valuesand underlying assumptions.

Loyalty was so central to the GMphilosophy that it is evident in what is absentfrom, as well as what is included in, thedominant culture's artifacts. Students of Jap-anese corporate cultures have noted the diffi-culty of interpreting crultural phenomena. Toappreciate the shape and placement of a rcxJcin a Japanese garden, the educated viewerfocuses on the empty spaces around the rock.Similarly, the process of "reading" the contentof a culture requires attention to disruptionsand to what is absent or unsaid, becausethese are also clues to what is expected.

Thus reinforcement of the value ofloyalty can also be seen in the type of organ-izational stories that were not found in thisorganizational setting. For example, Wrightbegan his discussion of the loyalty issue withthe telling observation that GM had no"prodigal son returns" story about an execu-tive who left his "corporate home," becausethose who left were considered deserters andwere not generally welcomed back.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A COUNTERCULTURE;

QUESTIONING DEFERENCE TO AUTHORITY

DeLorean expressed his opposition to defer-ence to authority by telling this organization-al story:

In preparing for the sales official's trip to this partic- 59

ular city, the Chevrolet zone sales people learnedfrom Detroit that the boss liked to have a refrigeratorfull of cold beer, sandwiches, and fruit in his roomto snack on at night before going to bed. They linedup a suite in one of the city's better hotels, rented arefrigerator, and ordered the food and beer. How-ever, the door to the suite was too small to accommo-date the icebox. The hotel apparently nixed a plan torip out the door and part of the adjoining wall. Sothe quick-thinking zone sales people hired a craneand operator, put them on the roof of the hotel,knocked out a set of windows in the suite, andlowered and shoved the refrigerator into the roomthrough this gaping hole.

That n i ^ t the Chevrolet executive wolfeddown cold-cul sandwiches, beer, and fresh fruit, nodoubt thinking, "What a great bunch of people wehave in this zone." The next day he was off to anothercity and most likely another refrigerator, while backin the city of his departure the zone people were onceagain dismantling hotel windows and removing therefrigeration by crane. (Wright, op. cit.)

The "refrigerator story" carries atleast two messages. First, it is common prac-tice at GM to engage in expensive and time-consuming efforts to defer to even minorwishes of people in authority positions. Sec-ond, the tone of the story implies that peoplewho engage in these activities sometimes goto ridiculous extremes.

The "refrigerator story" is an exam-ple of a cultural artifact that has "boom-eranged" against the dominant culture. Atfirst the story appears to be another illustra-tion of the importance of deference to au-thority, then it becomes clear that the storyportrays a situation in which this value hasbeen carried to a ridiculous extreme. Whencultural artifacts boomerang, they call intoquestion those core values that at first theyseem to reinforce. Boomeranging cultural ar-tifacts can breed a deep alienation from thedominant crulture's core values, underminingrather than supporting top management'sobjectives.

We posited that a counterculturewould undermine the dominant culture's val-ues, as evident in the "refrigerator story," and

60 that it would produce cultural artifacts sup-

porting an alternative set of core values. Thestory-creation process is one means of ex-pressing alternative values. The processbegins when a visible, often powerful andcharismatic figure responds to a situation ina dramatic fashion, role modeling the behav-ior that would be expected of employees whomight someday face a similar situation. If thecentral character is sufficiently noteworthy,the event sufficiently dramatic; and the be-havior clearly relevant to future activities,then the role-modeled event may be re-counted and eventually transformed into anorganizational story.

The story-creation process is oneway in which an individual actor can helpcreate a counterculture, though it is impor-tant to note that the process can occur with-out the central actor's intentional coopera-tion. Even if an actor does intend to create astory, the transformation of an event into ashared organizational story depends largelyon whether organizational members find itsufficiently interesting to repeat.

DeLorean, for example, repeatedlycreated such stories. For example, want-ing to replace deference to authority withtask-oriented efficiency, he decided to dis-courage the practice of meeting superiors atairports. Instead of issuing an edict bymemo, he role-modeled the behavior hewanted on an occasion when he was sched-uled to speak to a luncheon of McGraw-Hilleditors and executives in midtown Manhat-tan. DeLorean found his own ride from theairport to the McGraw-Hill offices. TheMcGraw-Hill people were used to GM execu-tives who traveled with "retinues befittingonly the potentates of great nations"; whenthey questioned DeLorean about the where-abouts of his subordinates, DeLorean com-placently replied that he hoped they wereback in Detroit getting some work done.DeLorean noted with some pride that hesubsequently heard that the "McGraw-Hillincident" had been retold many times, both

by his subordinates and by McGraw-Hillemployees. (Wright, op. cit.)

This incident was transformed intoan organizational story for several reasons.The star was DeLorean, a controversial andpowerful figure. The events were sufficientlyciramatic to be interesting and had clear im-plications for the types of behavior thatwould be considered appropriate for DeLore-an's subordinates. If a similar situation arose,subordinates surmised that they should notmeet DeLorean at the airport unless therewas specific business to conduct en route. Fi-nally, the events were noteworthy becausethey expressed a value that contradicted acore value of the dominant cnjlture. In DeLore-an's division, job performance was more im-portant than deference to authority.

An Altemative to Fitting In:The Limits of Acceptable Deviance

DeLorean was opposed to the value placed bythe dominant culture on team play and fit-ting in. Instead, he valued dissent and inde-pendence. Sensibly, he backed his valueswith practices — changing, for example, theperformance appraisal system in his division.No longer were subjective criteria, indicatingwillingness to fit in, considered relevant. In-stead, performance was measured on thebasis of criteria that were as objective aspossible.

DeLorean reinforced this value withcultural artifacts as well as practices. For ex-ample, he made a point of claiming that hewould rely on objective performance ap-praisal criteria, even when the results rancounter to his own subjective opinions. Hebacked this claim with an anecdote, which heclaimed became a shared organizationalstory. The central figure in the story, aside ofcourse from DeLorean himself, was a dis-agreeable man whose performance recordwas superlative. Despite his personal dislikeof the man, DeLorean promoted him four

times, admitting that he tried to "stay the hellaway from him." (Wright, op. cit.)

This anecdote has two intriguingcentral characters. DeLorean's strong dislikeof his subordinate adds an element of per-sonal interest. In addition, the anecdoteclearly prescribes how DeLorean would havehis subordinates behave when they assessedthe behavior of a disliked subordinate. In thisexample, DeLorean articulated a core valuethat was counter to the core values of thedominant culture, he backed that new valueby implementing consistent performance ap-praisal practices, and he dramatized andillustrated the value by role modeling the de-sired behavior. Although DeLorean's retro-spective account may exaggerate the inten-tionality and impact of his behavior, it isplausible that these activities contributed tothe development of a counterculture amongDeLorean's subordinates.

DeLorean also used other techniquesto facilitate the development of a countercul-ture. For example, when he was promoted tohead the Chevrolet division, he used decorchanges to symbolize his declaration of inde-pendence. The division's lobby and executiveoffices were refurbished with bright carpets,the paneling was sanded and restained, andmodem furniture was brought in. In accordwith the espoused values of independenceand dissent, executives were allowed "withinreasonable limits" to decorate their offices tofit their individual tastes.

In his own dress DeLorean role-modeled an apparently carefully calibratedwillingness to deviate from the dominant cul-ture's emphasis on fitting in. DeLorean's darksuits had a continental cut. His shirts wereoff-white with wide collars. His ties weresuitably muted, but wider than the GMnorm. His deviations were fashionable, forthe late 1960s, but they represented only aslight variation on the executive dress normsof the dominant culture.

If a counterculture is to survive 61

within the context of a dominant culture adelicate balancing act must be performed.DeLorean apparently did not hesitate to initi-ate stories and implement practices that di-rectly challenged the dominant culture's corevalues. His use of visible cultural aitifacts(not easily hidden from visiting outsiders)was more subtle, perhaps deliberately morecircumspect. Although the extent of his in-tentionality is unclear, DeLorean's devianceappears carefully calibrated to remain within,but test the limits of, the dominant culture'slatitude of acceptance.

Opposing Demands forUnquestioning Loyalty

The Corvair disasters provided superb rawmaterial for a "boomerang" challenge to thedominant culture's emphasis on loyalty. Thestory begins as a seemingly straightforwardpresentation epitomizing GM's finest charac-teristics. Initially the Corvair was seen as aninnovative, appealing product—the best thatCM minds could produce. The rear place-ment of the engine, the independent swing-axle suspension system, and the sporty styl-ing gave the Corvair a racy image designed toappeal to the young.

At this point the Corvair storyboomerangs: It takes a sudden tum and be-comes a scathing indictment of the values itfirst appeared to endorse. Several CM em-ployees raised objections to the car becauseof their concem about the lack of safety ofthe rear engine and the fact that the swing-axle design had a tendency to make the cardirectionally unstable and difficult to con-trol, with a propensity to flip over at highspeeds. (Cray, op. cit.) Despite evidencesupporting the validity of these objections,CM management told the dissenters to stopobjecting and join the team or find someother place to work. (Wright, op. dt.)

62 DeLorean concluded the Corvair

story by enumerating the deaths caused by itsfaulty design and the negative effects its pro-duction had on the firm. These disastrousconsequences included a "Watergate mentali-ty" that led to attempts to buy and destroyevidence of owner complaints about the car,millions of dollars in legal expenses and out-of-court settlements, and extensive damageto CM's reputation. DeLorean explicitlystated the moral to the Corvair story in termsof the "group think" dangers of an overem-phasis on loyalty:

There wasn't a man in top GM management who hadanything to do with the Corvair who would purpose-ly build a car that he knew would hurt or kill people.But, as part of a management team pushing for in-creased sales and profits, each gave his individual ap-proval in a group to decisions which produced thecar in the face of serious doubts that were raisedabout its safety, and then later sought to squelch in-formation which might prove the car's deficiencies.(Wright, op. cit.)

It is noteworthy that this contribu-tion to the creation of a counterculture with-in DeLorean's division includes no direct ac-tion. Instead, DeLorean merely offers, in thisboomeranging story, a reinterpretation ofpast events.

CONCLUSION

This analysis of the dominant culture at GMrevealed three core values. Deference to au-thority was represented in the airport ritualand jargon, such as "dog robbers." The valueof being invisible was expressed throughmanagement practices, such as subjectiveperformance appraisal criteria, and throughvisible artifacts, such as conservative dress,standardized office decor, and public eatingrituals. Tlie value of loyalty was so centralthat it was evident in what was absent— a re-tirement dinner ritual that was disrupted anda prodigal son story that was missing.

Evidence of a counterculture was

also found. In addition to ridiculing the val-ues of the dominant culture, DeLorean artic-ulated an altemative set of core values, pre-ferring productivity to deference, objectivemeasures of performance to subjective indi-cators of conformity, and independence toblind loyalty. Clearly the dominant andcountercultures take opposite positions onvalue issues of central importance to both.

Several of DeLorean's activities ap-parently influenced the development of thisuneasy symbiosis. First, he used Isoom-eranging" cultural artifacts, such as the "re-frigerator" and "Corvair" stories, to ridiculethe values of the dominant culture. Second,he articulated the counterculture] valuesopenly, through management practices suchas objective performance appraisal criteria,and through the story creation process, as inthe "McGraw-Hill" story. In addition, his useof such visible cultural artifacts as dress anddecor communicated more subtly the limitsof acceptable deviance.

While a manager alone may not beable to create or "manage" a culture, DeLore-an's activities suggest that several managerialtechniques may have a detectable impact onthe trajectory of a culture's, or a subculture's,development. Those techniques include im-plementation of practices that are consistentwith preferred values, articulation of "boom-erangs," attempts to create organizationalstories, and carefully calibrated uses of visi-ble artifacts.

If DeLorean's activities are to serveas a source of cultural management ideas, itis important to discuss the limitations of hisachievements at CM. It is true that for a timehe maintained a delicate balance, fosteringthe development of a counterculture thatrested within the dominant culture's latitudeof tolerance. Eventually, however, DeLorean'sdissent met with disfavor, and he left GM tofound a company of his own.

DeLorean's history at GM raises

some interesting questions that are addressedin Love's analysis of the absorption of pro-test. A counterculture can serve some usefulfunctions for a dominant culture, articulat-ing the boundaries between appropriate andinappropriate behavior and providing a safehaven for the development of innovativeideas. Did GM's top management wantDeLorean's counterculture to succeed, andwere they disappointed when his deviancewent beyond their latitude of tolerance? Or,as implied in the analysis of the basic as-sumptions imderlying the dominant culture'score values, had GM permitted DeLorean'scounterculture to grow and die in order toprovide an object lesson for other potentialdeviants? Or was the strength of the counter-culture an unanticipated and unwelcome sur-prise to the dominant culture? No matterwhich of these alternatives comes closest tothe truth, clearly it is a complex process, be-yond the control of any one individual, tomaintain the uneasy symbiotic relationshipthat exists between a dominant culture and acounterculture.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Organizational culture research has its roots inPhilip Selznick's Leadership and Administration(Row, Peterson, 1957) and Burton Clark's The Dis-tinctive College: Antioch, Reed, and Swarthmore(Aldine, 1970). Four books, oriented toward theprofessional manager, are largely responsible forthe recent renaissance of interest in this topic Wil-liam Ouchi's Theory Z: How American BusinessCan Meet the Japanese Challenge (Addison-Wes-ley, 1981) and Richard Pascale and AnthonyAthos's The Art of Japanese Management (Simon& Schuster, lnc, 1981) drew heavily on Japanese 6 3

models of corporate culture. Thomas Peters andRobert Waterman studied the cultures of unusual-ly profitable American companies in In Search ofExcellence (Harper & Row, 1982), as did Ter-rence Deal and Allan Kennedy in Corporate Cul-tures (Addison-Wesley, 1982).

Some have taken a critical view of thework that aroused this interest in culture. EdgarSchein disputed the reliance on Japanese models in"Does Japanese Management Style Have a Mes-sage for American Managers?" {Sloan Manage-ment Review. Fall 1981). The claim that culturesexpress an institution's distinctive competence orunique accomplishment was questioned by JoeinneMartin, Martha Feldman, Mary Jo Hatch, andSim Sitkin in The Uniqueness Paradox in Organi-zational Stories" [Administrative Science Quarter-ly, September 1983).

Others have taken a closer look at par-ticular cultural phenomena. Organizationalstories, legends, and myths have been studied byAlan Wilkins (see his article in this issue for refer-ences) and Joanne Martin —for example, see"Stories and Scripts in Organizational Settin.gs" inAlbert Hastorfs and Alice Isen's (editors) Cogni-tive Social Psychology (Elsevier-North Holland,1982). For an excellent sampling of papers abouta wide range of cultural phenomena, including or-ganizational stories, rituals, humor, and jargon,see the collection edited by Louis Pondy, PeterFrost, Gareth Morgan, and Thomas Dandridge,Organizational Symbolism (JAI Press, 1983).Ruth Leeds Love's discussion of absorption of pro-test appears in Harold Leavitt emd Jjauis Pondy'sReadings in Managerial Psychology, 2nd Edition(University of Chicago Press, 1974).

Another approach has been to study thefunctions served by different types of cultures. Forexample, John Van Maanen and Stephen Barleyhave studied occupations in "Occupational Com-munities: Culture and Control in Organizations,"in Barry Staw and Larry Cummings's (editors) Re-search in Organizational Behavior. Vol. 6 (JAIpress, in press). Caren Siehl and Joanne Martinhave studied the enculturation process for newemployees, producing a quantitative, easily ad-ministered measure of culture in "Symbolic Man-agement: Can Culture Be Transmitted?", a chapter

6 4 in the Annual Leadership Series, Vol. 7 (Southern

Illinois University Press, in press). Although therecent academic research is scattered in a varietyof scholarly journals, books integrating this litera-ture are being written by a number of people, in-cluding Edgar Schein, Meryl Louis, and JoanneMartin.

This article draws evidence concerningthe dominant and countercultures at GeneralMotors primarily from two sources: Ed Cray'sChrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times(McGraw-Hill, 1980) and J. P. Wright's On AClear Day You Can See General Motors (WrightEnterprises, 1979). Because Wright writes ofDeLorean's experiences in the first person, for thesake of clarity Wright's book is cited as represent-ing DeLorean's point of view. Because DeLoreanhas disowned Wright's efforts, however, it is high-ly likely that their opinions differ on some issues.In such cases the book is probably more represen-tative of Wright's opinions than DeLorean's, inspite of the former's use of the first person. Thepast tense is used throughout this article's descrip-tions of General Motors, because some informa-tion may no longer be accurate.

A number of other references on GeneralMotors were useful, including particularly theworks of A. D. Chandler, including Giant Enter-prise: Ford, General Motors, and the AutomobileIndustry (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964) andStrategy and Structure: Chapters in the History ofIndustrial Enterprise (MIT Press, 1969), PeterDnjcker's Concept of the Corporation (John DayCo., 1972), Ralph Nadar's Unsafe at Any Speed(Grossman, 1972), and Alfred P. Sloan Jr.'s MyYears With General Motors (McFadden-BartellCorp., 1965).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to thank the following people,who gave us particularly helpful comments on anearlier draft of this article: Susan Kreiger, HalLeavitt, Meryl Louis, Gerald Salancik, and EdgarSchein. A preliminary version of this article waspresented as part of the symposium "Can CultureBe Managed?" at the annual meeting of the Acad-emy of Management in New York City in August1982.