Abstract
A key element of Organizational Culture is members understanding of the nature of competence and the ways in which different constructions of competence are created by members and are negotiated. Within organizations and as a component of culture, understandings of competence have political, moral, and ethical dimensions. In this paper, there is an exploration of the complex relationships between competence and culture and the way they impact on managing organizations. The author has taken two idealizations of organizational culture that is corporate culture (in which there is an emphasis on management control and the "management of meaning") and the ensemble culture (in which management is seen as a concern for the preservation of members autonomy and in which meaning is emergent) and shows how in both cases psychodynamic issues generate turbulence such that idealization and recipes describing competence are called into question.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
