A Black Hole: Ambiguity in Organizational Cultures

This paper begins with a discussion of the wild ceremonial dances of Australian aborigines. It then proceeds, after a brief diversion into definitional matters to discuss elements of four organizational cultures:

1. The U.S. Department of Energy
2. The Pentagon
3. the Women’s Bank in New York
4. A large multinational corporation

Commonalities underlying the diversity of these cultural descriptions point to a black hole — an aspect of culture that is excluded from our definitions and underemphasized in our studies of culture. The first stop in the odyssey, then, is Australia.