Yes / Nearly twenty years after the publication of the (in)famous In Search of Excellence, the
notion of `cultural change¿ within organisations continues to excite attention. This is
readily understandable, since cultural interventions offer practitioners the hope of a
universal panacea to organisational ills and academics an explanatory framework that
enjoys the virtues of being both partially true and gloriously simple. Such a
combination is apparent in the way that many attempts to shape organisational culture
are presented to the public: as simple stories with happy endings.1 This article attempts
to rescue a fairy-tale. The story of British Airways is one of the most widely used
inspirational accounts of changing culture. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s it was
used to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of pleasure and profits2 in celebratory
accounts where culture change is presented as the only explanation for the
transformation that occurred. This corrective makes no attempt to deny the very
substantial changes that took place in BA. Rather, it sets these in context noting the
organisation¿s environment at the time of the transformation, the structural changes
that took place and observes the impact that such changes had over the long term.3¿5
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/955 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Grugulis, C. Irena, Wilkinson, Adrian |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Rights | © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
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