Negotiated Orders and Organizational Cultures

Negotiated order and organizational culture represent two of the major recent approaches to the study of organizational life. Both of them focus on the actor's perspective on life in an organization, and they are complementary, even though they have rarely been brought together. They emphasize worker satis­ faction and commitment and the noneconomic, nonrational working of orga­ nizations. Proponents of both perspectives also stress that members (and organizations) must take into account the constraints of their social and physi­ cal environments. In examining the connections between these two approaches, this chapter discusses how they treat socialization, power, con­ flict, and interorganizational relations and how they are applied to organiza­