The Nature of Culture
Anthropologists debate the definition of culture endlessly. Here we need only focus on the main outlines of the concept. Culture is essentially composed of interpretations of a world and the activities and artifacts that reflect these. Beyond cognition these interpretations are
shared collectively, in a social process. There are no private cultures.Some activities may be individual, but their significance is collective. We thus associate organizational culture with collective cognition. It becomes the "organization's mind," if you like, the shared beliefs that
are reflected in traditions and habits as well as more tangible manifestations—stories, symbols, even buildings and products. Pettigrew (1985:44) put it well when he wrote that organizational culture can be seen as an "expressive social tissue," and much like tissue in the human body, it binds the bones of organizational structure to the muscles of organizational processes. In a sense, culture represents the life force of the organization, the soul of its physical body.