Management contradictions on ¿corporate culture¿ dissemination: the case of a Brazilian state-owned company

Abstract

The advocates of "corporate culture" proposals see the manager as an agent of consensus, capable of integrating others in a "single" culture. Those who oppose such proposals focus on the organizational alienation and exploitation enforced by managers. This article proposes to extrapolate this perspective of the manager simply as an agent of consensus. It points out its limitations, contrasting the origins and criticisms of "corporate culture" studies and underlining aspects that can lead the manager to disseminate differences and ambiguity. The argument is based on a study of a regional branch of the Brazilian Postal Service (Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Telégrafos - ECT). The data was collected in documents and semi-structured inter- views with 26 subjects at different managerial levels. Data treatment was based on content analysis, in search of patterns or recurrences of words, sentences, ideas or topics of interest. The study concluded that the manager cannot be considered only an element of consensus, since he or she disseminates integration as well as differen- tiation and fragmentation, permeated by personal, social and organizational goals and issues, and not limited by the company¿s interests.