`Doing' Organizational Culture in the Saturn Corporation

Abstract

As we break loose from an urban-industrial way of life and become engulfed in technological, information-based worlds, this dramatic shift in reality pushes many of us towards feelings of intense crisis. The fragmentation of the macro-cultural framework enables a multiplicity of thought-styles to emerge. This rise of social multiplicity, plurality, fragmentation, and indeterminacy leads to aggressive criticisms of traditional modern culture and politics. Yet while there is a break from the rationalized, homogeneous modern world, the `postmodern' world remains ambiguous. Deeply rooted within this struggle for meaning lies language and knowing. Reality is `made real' through language and thought. One way to remain organized is through the manipulation of thought through language. How is a meaningful, stable existence conveyed in a world in which the taken for granted meanings and stability that were `there' in modern settings now appear to be shattered? Our analysis of the Saturn Corporation, USA, focuses on the organizational function of creating and re-creating the roles of producer, consumer, and product in a way that taps into a need for community and affiliation that is acutely felt in this time of rational crisis. Through the mechanism of storytelling, the Saturn advertisements create a grand narrative, weaving a tale that makes the existence of a single, family-like symbolic community between the Saturn corporation and the consumers of its product seem real to those intimately involved in acting out the story.

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