The transformation of workplace culture

A theoretical perspective is developed for the critical examination of organisation culture. A structurationist approach is taken to link interpretive and radical structuralist paradigms in this examination. The perspective is applied to investigate a change program in the New Zealand division of a multi-national Bank. The focus is on the use of culture by management to control and change employee performance, in particular to shift the branch culture from a credit and process orientation toward a sales and customer focus. Findings of research conducted at the senior management and branch workplace levels are reported. The goal of the paper is to encourage critical reflection on the beliefs, values, and understandings of organisational life that are sometimes represented as universal, but which advance particular interests. The study’s findings illustrate a range of techniques used by management to transform a workplace culture, and the various reactions of employees to these efforts, manifest in forms of acceptance, appropriation, and resistance.