An excellent illustration of this kind of analysis has been provided by my colleague Linda Smircich, who studied the top executive group of an American insurance company. The company was a division of a much larger organization offering a broad range of insurance services to agri cultural organizations and to the general public. Sustained observation of day-to-day management generated two key impressions First, the company seemed to emphasize cooperative values and an identity rooted in the world of agriculture rather than in that of competi- tive business. The staff were polite and gracious and always seemed pre pared to give help and assistance wherever it was needed. This ethos was reflected in one of the company mottoes: "We grow friends. However, coexisting with this surface of friendly cooperation was a second dimension of organizational culture that suggested that the coop erative ethos was at best superficial. Meetings and other public forums always seemed dominated by polite yet disinterested exchange. Staff rarely got involved in any real debate and seemed to take very little in depth interest in what was being said. For example, hardly anyone took any notes, and the meetings were in effect treated as ritual occasions. This superficiality was confirmed by observed differences between the public and private faces of the organization. Whereas in public, the ethos of har mony and cooperation ruled, in private, people often expressed consider- able anger and dissatisfaction with various staff members and with the organization in general Many organizations have fragmented cultures of this kind, where people say one thing and do another. One of the interesting features of Linda Smircich's study was that she was able to identify the precise ci cumstances that had produced the fragmentation within e company and was able to show why it continued to operate in its somewhat schiz ophrenic fashion. Ten years earlier, when the organization was just four years old, it had passed through a particularly "traumatic" period that witnessed the demotion of its president, the hiring and firing of his suc cessor, and the appointment of a group of professionals from the insur ance industry at large. These events led to the development of separate subcultures. The first of the was represented by the original staff, or as they came to be known, and the second by the new inside group professionals "the outside group." Most of the outside group had been recruited from the same rival insurance company and brought with them very strong beliefs as to what was needed in heir new organization. "This was how we did it at became a frequent stance taken in discussion They wanted to model the new organization on the old.