Cultural Change in the Kibbutz Factory ‘Bereshit’(Genesis): An Israeli Case Study

Abstract

Cultural changes in the ‘Bereshit’ factory have been influenced by the privatization process that has engulfed the majority of Israeli kibbutzim. In the wake of organizational difficulties and economic losses, the kibbutz management (the factory owner) appointed as factory manager someone from the outside to oversee changes, a person without commitment to current factory workers who were kibbutz members as well. This change of management accelerated the inevitable processes of change: the collectivist culture that had previously favoured kibbutz members and assigned primary importance to them, evolved into a far more capitalistic one. Today the factory is managed along purely business lines that leave no room for any obligations toward individuals. Nevertheless, the new management has adopted a dual value system: on the one hand, it supports a materialist and capitalistic approach to the worker, but on the other it fosters the image of the factory as a ‘home’ that both preserves classic collectivist values and expects its workers to feel a primary and familial obligation to ‘Bereshit’. This duality is examined in light of Schwarz’s organizational culture model.