| Abstract: | Organizational culture is an obscure and poorly understood part of organizational life. In scholarly work, researchers use organizational culture as both a catch‐all term and a black box of intrigue. The former suggests its omnipresence and ability to take the blame for all that ills organizations. The latter denotes a mythical and misunderstood invisible cloak that covers organizations and organizational life, yet is misconstrued, complex, and confusing. This paper presents a brief summary of the multidisciplinary history of organizational culture as a concept and operationalized term while simultaneously suggesting our knowledge of organizational culture remains at its infancy. Using prisons as a case study example, the authors consider how better to unpack organizational culture using sound and rigorous qualitative methods with careful attention to sampling and researcher–subject collaboration. Concluding thoughts note the importance of using culture as a dependent, rather than independent variable, so scholars will stop scapegoating culture as the answer to why organizational processes and outcomes fail and will instead recognize the study of culture as the problem itself. |
