Organizational Culture as an Analytical Perspective on ‘Organizational Failure’

Abstract

Under the knowledge-based economy, the new public management demands that the university as a source of wealth and well-being functions as an ‘organization’. However, university reform has not functioned smoothly, and a situation of hybridisation has emerged, where heterogeneous ideologies of managerialism and collegiality coexist. Oliver Williamson states that ‘the organizational failures’ result when bounded rationality and opportunism, which are human nature, combine with environmental factors. And the current situation of hybridisation suggests the importance of focusing on the organizational culture that defines the mindset of organizational members. This paper proposes the ‘organizational paradigm’ as an analytical framework that integrates the thinking and behavioural styles of university members into the typology of organizational culture based on the Competing Values Framework by Cameron et al. and refers to the importance of organizational culture in university organizational reform through verification with the author’s findings of quantitative analysis in Japanese universities.