California Southern University: Corporate Culture Ethnography Project

This project presents an ethnographic study of corporate culture, focusing on conflict management within a chosen organization, Prismatic InfoTech. The research, conducted for BUS 87305 at California Southern University, explores the types of workplace conflicts and their resolution. The student conducted primary research, including interviews with employees and supervisors, and secondary research by reading relevant literature on workplace culture and conflict management. The study includes a cultural inventory of the organization, highlighting its unique aspects, cultural assets, and employee engagement activities. The project utilizes thematic analysis to analyze interview data, revealing the role of leadership in mitigating and resolving conflicts, particularly those arising from cultural differences. The research emphasizes the importance of management in fostering a culture of empathy and tolerance to promote workplace harmony. The student also reflects on the ethnographic research experience, emphasizing the practical insights gained from examining an organization from close quarters.

Running head: BUSINESS ETHNOGRAPHY OF CORPORATE CULTURE
Business Ethnography of Corporate Culture
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BUSINESS ETHNOGRAPHY OF CORPORATE CULTURE
Task 4
Some of the activities that I conducted this week apart from doing primary research at the
chosen organization was to read up on the subject of workplace culture. For this purpose, I chose
the work composed by Hofstede and McRae (2004), on the subject and reading the text made me
aware of the different types of cultural conflicts that can arise at the workplace and how the
culture of the organization needs to be one that aims at a good integration and acceptance of
cultural differences, enabling employees to work sufficiently well with one another (Hofstede &
Bond, 1984). I also read a number of other texts on the subject of workplace conflict
management. This week was spent in doing constructive research. I gained a lot of answers and
information from the interviews that I conducted at the chosen organization and the readings that
I engaged in to follow up on the research process provided me with additional information about
workplace conflicts and the ways that these are resolved. I can happily admit that I did some
decent homework on the subject matter of investigation in this one week and that I am sure that
the work I have done and the information that I have obtained will stand me in good stead in the
coming weeks of research and investigation. My work this week was made particularly easy by
the fact that my acquaintances at the chosen organization made it convenient for me to schedule
interviews with employees and supervisors at the organization who have witnessed conflict
taking place here and who have participated in the conflict resolution process as well.

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Task 5
This is a week where I focused on conducting research interviews with people who work
at supervisory levels of the organization that I have chosen as a subject for investigation. It was
an eye opener for me, the entire experience, as it exposed me to the type of approaches that
supervisors are seen to deploy when handling a situation of conflict that can arise at the work
place. I spoke to as many as 5 supervisors at the chosen organization and got to learn from them
first hand, that resolving conflicts in an organizational set up require a combination of tact,
diplomacy and authority all at the same given time, something that has been well pointed out by
Hofstede (1980). The interviews that I took and the answers that I received as part of the
interview process gave be sufficient understanding of how conflicts are to be resolved or
prevented from the management perspective and how mitigating conflicts at the workplace is
absolutely imperative as it can otherwise create quite a detrimental impact on the workplace
culture or the culture of the organization and keep workers from performing as effectively as
they otherwise could. I was lucky enough to procure interview sessions with some of the
members of the top level of the management of the organization putting me in a position to
understand how the process of cultural conflict management and resolution works when it is
handled in a top down manner (Hofstede, 1994). The answers that I received were particularly
impressive as they informed me about how ruthless and sensitive managers have to be at the
same given time to get conflicts resolved at the workplace.

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Task 6
The activities that I conducted this week were definitely challenging to begin with as this
was the week when I carried out primary research where the respondents were the managers and
supervisors of the organization that I have chosen to investigate on. The research methods
constituted interviews and participant observation or observation of the surroundings or
environment being investigated (Spradley, 2016). Interviewing members of the top-level
management of any organization can be quite an intimidating experience and I had to make sure
to design interview questions that were not only specific and focused in their nature but which
would also be comfortable enough for the managers to answer. Apart from designing good
interview questions this week and apart from conducting interviews with the managers at the
selected organization, I also focused a lot on educating myself on conflict management as a
subject in general and for this purpose I decided to watch a number of Youtube videos, on the
subject. Some Youtube videos can be quite educational in nature and content and so I did not
hesitate to look up the subject of conflict management and conflict resolution at the workplace
on Youtube channels (Folger et al., 2017). Upon consulting the Youtube channels I got to know
diverse international perspectives on conflict management and conflict resolution at the
workplace, mostly interviews and talks given by management experts and people who are
employed in high level corporate management work the world over. I chose to access Youtube as
the content on this channel is free to subscribe to and given the fact that I have limited resources
to conduct the investigation with, opting to access information on the subject matter as made
available on Youtube seemed to me an easy and convenient thing to do.

4BUSINESS ETHNOGRAPHY OF CORPORATE CULTURE
Task 7
This particular week was one where the project advanced considerably. I took interviews
of a more in-depth nature with the employees of the chosen organization, the same people that I
had spoken to and interacted with in the initial stages of the research. What I got to know
through the interviews the second time around is that leadership and management has a vital role
to play in conflict management at the workplace something that has also been argued by Beitler
et al. (2018). I discovered that while employees do feel tempted to help out when a conflict
situation arises, they lack the courage and the confidence or the ability to handle such situations
which managers have. Managers are capable of mitigating conflict situations immediately, of
nipping such situations in the bud and also preventing such situations from ever arising again in
the future (McKibben, 2017). It is through these discussions that I had with several of the
employees of the chosen organization that I got to know that if a conflict is to be resolved then it
is the support and the role of the management that is invoked. It is the managers who act as
authority figures in the situation, who get to the bottom of the conflict and who have the
capability of preventing such situations from arising ever again by setting the ground rules
needed for this purpose. What made the matter clearer to me was not only the in-depth personal
interviews that I carried out with the employees of the organization but also the focus group
discussions that I managed to conduct with groups of employees working at the same
organization and who provided me with valuable insights on the subject of conflict management
at the organization.

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Task 8
The activities that were focused on this week were conducting the final round of
interviews with the employees of the organization that has been chosen as a subject for
investigation as well as reading up further on the subject of conflict management and conflict
resolution. Reading Hofstede’s work on workplace culture appeared to me to be even more
significant than it is as I gradually began to compare the views of Hofstede on workplace culture
with the information that I received upon conducting the interviews and focus group discussions,
realizing in the process that culture can be one of the triggers for conflict at the workplace
(Hofstede, 1980). Cultural differences if they persist among colleagues can lead to frequent
clashes breaking out at the workplace and which can be hard to control if adequate control
mechanisms are not in place for this purpose, something that is the responsibility of the
management of the organization (Geertz, 2008). A culture of empathy and tolerance has to be
established by the management of the organization so that employees may abide by this culture
and learn to accept each other’s differences and work in a spirit of harmony instead of
disagreeing with one another on account of ethnic, religious and cultural differences (Helms &
Oliver, 2015). The work of Hofstede et al. on the subject of workplace or organizational culture
as it is often termed resonated very well with me and helped me to analyze the findings of my
qualitative research study far better than I could otherwise have done.

6BUSINESS ETHNOGRAPHY OF CORPORATE CULTURE
Task 9
The project by now has advanced quite a bit. Several interviews have been taken with the
employees at the chosen organization and several interviews have also at the same given time
been taken with the managers or people holding supervisory roles at the organization. The
interviews that have been taken thus far reveal that conflict management in an organizational set
up is a complicated process and that the heavy hand of the management is needed to keep this
problem under control at all times. It is heartening to note that none of the respondents have been
hesitant when it came to participating in the interviews. They were all willing and forthcoming in
this matter and provided clarity on the manner by which conflicts are handled in the workplace,
especially when cultural conflicts arise such as a clash over ethnic or religious differences. I have
started compiling and analyzing the findings of the data that was collated through the various
interviews using the method of thematic analysis. Content and textual analysis as well as
narrative analysis has been used in order to conduct the data analysis for the information that has
been retrieved through the interviews and the focus group discussions (Silverman, 2016). This
thematic data analysis that was carried out is something that appears to make it all the more clear
that leadership has a major role to play in resolving conflict management and also in mitigating
conflict at the workplace especially when it is combined with secondary literary sources on the
same subject (McKibben, 2017).

7BUSINESS ETHNOGRAPHY OF CORPORATE CULTURE
Task 10
The primary activity at this stage of the research has been to collate all the data that has
been retrieved upon conducting the interviews and the focus group discussions and then to
subject all of this to a thematic data analysis that includes content, textual and narrative analysis
(Silverman. 2016). Yet another activity that was carried out at this stage of the research was to
prepare what may be termed as a cultural inventory for the organization upon which the
investigation was carried out in the first place (Folger et al, 2017). The organization deals with
information technology and has been in operation for the last five to six years.

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Task 11
Cultural Inventory of the Organization – Prismatic InfoTech
1. What makes the organization unique?
What makes this organization unique is the fact that it has a diverse work population/
2. What are the different ethnicities among the work population of the organization?
The organization is made up of White American people, Indians, Chinese, African Americans
and the Latino population.
3. What are the Cultural Assets of the Organization?
Some of the cultural assets of the organization include acceptance of religious diversity,
acceptance of gender diversity and gender sensitivity
4. What are the activities pertaining to organizational culture as carried out at the
Organization?
Some of the activities that are carried out at the organization and which serve as a reflection of
the organization’s culture and employee engagement activities like football and cricket, pot luck
dinners and luncheons and community service at orphanages and in old age homes.

9BUSINESS ETHNOGRAPHY OF CORPORATE CULTURE
Task 12
What for me has been the most enjoyable part of this course is the ethnographic research
experience that I have gained upon taking part in the various investigative activities. This is a
research project that has given me the full opportunity to examine an organization from close
quarters. I have engaged in participant observation by paying close attention to the behavior of
the people in the workplace that I have chosen as a subject for the investigation and I have tried
to pay special importance to details as I know this is crucial for good ethnographic work
(Spradley, 2016). I have also employed effective and legitimate methods of qualitative and
ethnographic research such as the focus group discussions and interviews that have gone a long
way in helping me to establish a relationship of confidence with the respondents and get the
much needed answers from all of them. Developing the cultural inventory was a fun exercise and
I was able to do this by spending long hours at the organization and by engaging with the people
who work over here on a one to one basis. I am particularly excited and happy about the fact that
I was able to obtain managerial and employee based perspectives on the subject of conflict
management at the work place, especially cultural conflict and its management. Such an
engagement with employees and supervisors has provided me with more than sufficient
understanding of how and why conflict takes place at an organization and how effectively this
can be resolved through leadership, a concept well-articulated by Helms and Oliver (2015).

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References
Beitler, L. A., Scherer, S., & Zapf, D. (2018). Interpersonal conflict at work: Age and emotional
competence differences in conflict management. Organizational Psychology
Review, 8(4), 195-227.
Folger, J., Poole, M. S., & Stutman, R. K. (2017). Working through conflict: Strategies for
relationships, groups, and organizations. Routledge.
Geertz, C. (2008). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In The cultural
geography reader (pp. 41-51). Routledge.
Helms, W. S., & Oliver, C. (2015). Radical settlements to conflict: Conflict management and its
implications for institutional change. Journal of Management & Organization, 21(4),
471-494.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture and organizations. International Studies of Management &
Organization, 10(4), 15-41.
Hofstede, G. (1994). The business of international business is culture. International business
review, 3(1), 1-14.
Hofstede, G. and McCrae, R.R., 2004. Personality and culture revisited: Linking traits and
dimensions of culture. Cross-cultural research, 38(1), pp.52-88.
Hofstede, G., & Bond, M. H. (1984). Hofstede's culture dimensions: An independent validation
using Rokeach's value survey. Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 15(4), 417-433.

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McKibben, L. (2017). Conflict management: importance and implications. British Journal of
Nursing, 26(2), 100-103.
Silverman, D. (Ed.). (2016). Qualitative research. Sage
Spradley, J. P. (2016). Participant observation. Waveland Press.