1. The Art of the Possible
A Documentary on Narrative Approaches to Pediatric Cancer Care
A 10 Minute Demo
Produced by
Lynn Harter, Ph.D.
Directed by
Casey Hayward, M.F.A.

2. Meet Anna, her mom, and nurse Maritza…

3. Defining Organizational Culture
Culture: a pattern of basic assumptions – invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration; created through cx
Function to:
Help members cope with uncertainty
Create identities
Create continuity (i.e., socialization)

4. Elements of Culture Values (ideologies) Norms Heroes Rites and Rituals
Cultural Network
Stories
Metaphors
Myths/legends
Goal of org cx researcher: investigate cx processes through which culture is created

5. Sub-cultures/Counter-cultures
Subculture: smaller groups sharing values that may differ slightly from the whole; arise from:
Differential interaction
Shared experiences
Similar personal characterstics
Counter-culture: basic understandings question and oppose the overall culture in some way

8. Cultural vs Critical Perspectives
Descriptive hermeneutic approach – concerned with interpreting organizational symbolic practices (i.e., cultural approach)
Hermeneutics of suspicion – preserves focus on symbolic practices and the creation of organizational meaning systems, but situates this relationship within critical conception of orgs as sites of discursive and material domination (i.e., critical approach)

9. Critical Perspectives
Organizations – not neutral sites of meaning formation; rather, they are produced and reproduced in context of struggles between competing interest groups and systems of representation
Role of researcher:
Reveal how social and technological structures within organizations serve to oppress workers; ultimate goal is emancipation/consciousness-raising
Work with participants as co-investigators

10. Issues of power and control
Mgmt = control of resources
Control is created and maintained in variety of ways
Outright exercise of power (traditional perspective)
Hegemony (Gramsci) – unknowing adoption of a dominant group’s values and beliefs, even though those goals may not be in interest of subordinate group
Concertive control – adherence to socially constructed norms developed by members themselves as they attempt to structure their environment

11. Focus of critical inquiry
Ideology critique – denaturalize social order that is taken for granted
Recognize diverse rationalities
Identify universalization of dominant group interests
Identify spaces of resistance and empowerment
Look for contradictions and paradoxes that emerge from competing values