CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 249Management and Organizational StudiesContemporary Sociological Theory and PracticeCultural Capital and Social Class

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 97 of the 98 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Symbolic Power and Organizational Culture

Hallett, Tim·2003·Sociological Theory
DOI 10.1111/1467-9558.00181
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

With the recent wave of corporate scandals, organizational culture has regained relevance in politics and the media. However, to acquire enduring utility, the concept needs an overhaul to overcome the weaknesses of earlier approaches. As such, this paper reconceptualizes organizational culture as a negotiated order (Strauss 1978) that emerges through interactions between participants, an order influenced by those with the symbolic power to define the situation. I stress the complementary contributions of theorists of practice (Bourdieu and Swidler) and theorists of interaction (Goffman and Strauss), building upward from practice into interaction, symbolic power, and the negotiated order. Using data from initial reports on the fall of Arthur Andersen and Co., I compare this symbolic power approach to other approaches (culture as subjective beliefs and values or as context/public meaning). The symbolic power model has five virtues: an empirically observable object of study; the capacity to explain conflict and integration; the ability to explain stability and change; causal efficacy; and links between the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels of analysis. Though this paper focuses on organizational culture, the symbolic power model provides theoretical leverage for understanding many situated contexts.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/1467-9558.00181

Cites

97 of 97 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 98 references

Research works printed but not linked: 26

  1. Alexander D., 2002, Chicago Tribune, 1
  2. Alexander D., 2002, Chicago Tribune, 1
  3. Alexander D., 2002, Chicago Tribune, 1
  4. Alexander D., 2002, Chicago Tribune, 1
  5. Bourdieu P., 1988, Homo Academicus.
  6. Bourdieu P., 1998, On Television.
  7. 10.5465/amr.1980.4288894 · DOI
  8. Frost P. J., 1991, Refraining Organizational Culture, 1
  9. Gamson W., 1995, Social Movements and Culture, 85
  10. Geertz C., 1973, Interpretation of Cultures.
  11. Giddens A., 1984, The Constitution of Society.
  12. Glickauf J. S., 1971, Footsteps toward Professionalism: Selected Addresses by Joseph S. Glickauf.
  13. Goffman E., 1961, Asylums.
  14. Goffman E., 1967, Interaction Ritual.
  15. Goffman E., 1974, Frame Analysis.
  16. Lee O., 2000, Current Perspectives in Sociological Theory, 20, 27
  17. Measelle D., 2002, Chicago Tribune
  18. Meyerson D. E., 1991, Refraining Organizational Culture, 131
  19. Nord W., 1985, Organizational Culture: The Meaning of Life in the Workplace, 187
  20. Schein E., 1991, Refraining Organizational Culture, 14
  21. Spacek L., 1969, A Search for Fatness in Financial Reporting to the Public: Selected Addresses by Leonard Spacek, 1956–1969.
  22. Spacek L., 1985, The Growth of Arthur Andersen and Company.
  23. 10.2307/258488 · DOI
  24. Van Maanen J., 1991, Reframing Organizational Culture
  25. Weber M., 1968, Economy and Society.
  26. Wilkins A., 1983, Organizational Symbolism, 81

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Hallett, T.
Affiliations
Indiana University (US)
Corresponding author
Hallett, Tim
ORCID
Hallett, Tim
Venue
Sociological Theory
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2003-06
Volume
21
Issue
2
Pages
128-149
ISSN
  • 0735-2751 (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-9558
DOI
10.1111/1467-9558.00181
OpenAlex
W2079622963
Cited by
249
References
98
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 11
FWCI
9.30
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
Sociological Theory (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Cultural Capital and Social Class
Keywords
organizational culture, symbolic power, negotiated order, corporate scandals, Arthur Andersen, Pierre Bourdieu, Erving Goffman, Strauss, practice theory, interaction theory, situated context

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review