Review: The Emic and Etic Uses of the Term ‘Corporate Culture’

Abstract

Corporate culture has been studied widely both as the focus of research or as one of the significant contributing factors in the operation of a company/organization. In studies on culture, social researchers acknowledge two different views: emic and etic. However, these two contrasting views have not been a concern of corporate or organizational culture researchers. This paper aims to shed light on this issue by reviewing different narrative analyses from various corporate culture studies. The author proposes a solution which enables researchers to ensure the inclusion of both emic and etic views on corporate culture in their research which is by using a model which adopts a continuum consisting of corporate culture and corporate cultural policy.