ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

DECIPHERING CULTURE 205Table 11.1 Categories of Research on Organizations.Level of Researcher InvolvementLevel of “Subject” Low to Medium; High;Involvement Quantitative QualitativeMinimal Demographics: Ethnography: participantmeasurement of observation; content analysis“distal variables” of stories, myths, rituals,symbols, other artifactsPartial Experimentation: Projective tests; assessmentquestionnaires, ratings, centers; interviewsobjective tests, scalesMaximal Total quality tools such Clinical research;as statistical quality organization developmentcontrol; action researchCopyright © E. H. Schein.of the organization become in the data gathering process. Some culturalartifacts can be gathered by purely demographic methods or byobservation at a distance, such as photographing buildings, observingaction in the organization without getting involved, enteringthe organization incognito, and so on. As was pointed out in ChapterTwo, the problem with this method is that the data may be clearbut undecipherable. I could see all the fighting at DEC from a distance,but I had no idea what it meant.If we want to understand more of what is going on, we must getmore involved through becoming a participant observer/ethnographer,but we do not, in this role, want the subjects to become toodirectly involved lest we unwittingly change the very phenomenawe are trying to study. To minimize the inevitable biases that resultfrom our own involvement, we may use informants to help us clarifywhat we observe or to decipher the data we are gathering, but welimit the organization’s involvement as much as possible.