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elucidate these conflicts and inconsistencies. Martin (2002) argues that, “The purpose of social
science theory is not to comfort managers with an easy solution, but to capture and possibly
construct organizational experiences” (p. 9). Indeed, many researchers in organizational studies
have focused on tensions through the study of how culture evolves and is enacted as well as how
power structures within groups affect organizational culture and work performance (Conrad &
Poole, 1998; Deetz, 1998; Kotter & Heskett, 1992; Pfeffer, 1992; Schein, 1992; Weick, 1979;
1995).
Such an approach to cultural research centers on an ontology of becoming (Chia, 1996;
Martin, 2002). That is, rather than studying and writing about culture as if it could be accurately
known and represented unproblematically, thus focusing on reified cultural concepts, such
scholars explore how reified concepts come to be created as categories and thereby focus on
processes of becoming. Processes create common-sense orientations to the workplace, resulting in
apparently stable and reified ideas, such as “truth” claims concerning individuals, groups, and
organizations (Martin, 2002). Processes of ordering, classifying, and interpreting are intimately
intertwined with the ways in which we use language (Martin, 2002). Within an ontological
perspective of becoming, then, culture can be defined as the set of meanings in a particular
organization that gives a group its own ethos, or distinctive character, which evolves in expressed
patterns of ideology, norms and rituals, language and other symbolic forms through which
organization members create and sustain both their view of the world and their image of
themselves in the world (Smirich, 1993). A culture’s development of a worldview encompasses
its understanding of group identity, purpose, and direction, which are products of the unique
history, personal interactions, and environmental circumstances of the group (Smircich, 1993).
When organizational culture is studied from this perspective, attention is drawn to aspects
of organizational life that historically have often been ignored or understudied, such as
Convention