CULTURE as PROCESS: A Research Series on Organizational Culture as Reproduction [WP1-18]

Abstract

Culture as Process: A Research Series on Organizational Culture as Reproduction Culture as Process is a research series of eighteen Working Papers that proposes a theoretical repositioning of organizational culture. Instead of treating culture as content that an organization possesses, that is, a set of values, norms, and assumptions captured at a single moment, the series argues that culture is better understood as the set of processes through which an organization reproduces its ways of acting, deciding, and interpreting over time, across the turnover of its members. The series begins from a widely shared observation. Culture is recognized as consequential, yet it escapes the tools that claim to manage it. Working Paper 1 sets out the operational definition that guides the whole series and locates the real culture in the tacit assumptions that govern conduct rather than in espoused values. Working Paper 2 develops the theoretical repositioning and identifies the four processes that constitute cultural reproduction. The core of the series is organized in four movements, one for each process. First movement, transmission (Working Papers 3 to 6). This movement examines the process through which tacit knowledge passes to newcomers through shared experience and travels along the informal network of weak ties. It documents the atrophy of informal channels under remote and hybrid work It identifies the socialization of newcomers as the point where reproduction breaks first. Second movement, revealed behavior (Working Papers 7 to 9). This movement develops the thesis that the real culture is read in decisions rather than in statements, that is, in who is promoted, in what is tolerated, and above all in the structure of incentives. It shows that the gap between the declared and the enacted is a structural property of reproduction, not a flaw to be corrected. It builds a diagnostic method based on nonreactive measurement. Third movement, memory (Working Papers 10 to 12). This movement addresses the process that preserves past decisions and the reasons behind them. It shows that the most fragile part of what a culture remembers is the reason a decision was made, which remains tacit and leaves with the people who held it, producing turnover amnesia. It presents empirical evidence that organizational knowledge depreciates in a measurable way. Fourth movement, conflict (Working Papers 13 to 15). This movement argues that a healthy culture is not one in which harmony reigns but one that renegotiates its own norms through disagreement without breaking apart. It distinguishes the health of conflict from comfort, and shows why climate surveys measure the wrong target. It establishes that productive disagreement is a cultural competence reproduced through the four processes. The final Working Papers examine generative artificial intelligence as a common accelerator of the four erosions already documented. Working Paper 16 argues that artificial intelligence does not constitute a fifth process but acts on all four at once, while remaining structurally unable to take part in cultural reproduction. Working Paper 17 documents the selective reduction of entry level roles and its effect on apprenticeship. Working Paper 18, the closing paper, proposes a four point agenda for rebuilding the conditions of reproduction rather than rewriting the stated values. A single thread holds the series together. Because reproduction is a mechanism that is neutral with respect to value, a process that functions well consolidates whatever it reproduces, whether sound or harmful. The erosions the series describes are invisible to the content measures of culture, and this invisibility is precisely what makes the accumulated evidence a confirmation of the processual thesis.