This paper discusses an ethnographic study drawn from biographical documents, and interviews with managers and engineers in a telecomunications company. It argues that though a corporate culture is designed to generate meanings for identity and integration around corporate values, it can, paradoxically, create employee's distancing and foster the division of the organization into subcultures. It suggests that culture, power and identity are also closely interrelated in the sense that they nurture meanings for each other. An organizational culture, by re-affirming the values and ideologies which give distinction to a group as regard to "others", also constructs the legitimate basis of the group's power. On the other hand, when employees feel that the organization cannot fulfil their professional expectations or if managers' values threaten their self-concept, not only do they refuse to reinforce the meanings embedded in the corporative philosophy, but they may try to undermine its principles by articulating opposition groups.
corporate culture; institutionalisation; identity
