Doing new things in old ways

Citation: Van Maanen, J. (1983) Doing new things in old ways. Produced for the Department of Naval Affairs (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Doing new things in old ways
Download: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA130450
Tagged: socialization (RSS), culture (RSS), police (RSS)

Summary

Van Maanen considers - via three cultural vignettes - the role of socialization into organizations that ignore or seek to retain the uniqueness of their recruits. In 1983, the vast preponderance of socialization accounts were of the "total institution" type; these were stories of the elimination of idiosyncrasy and variance.

Van Maanen rightly points out that many (perhaps even most) organizations select new members based on their unique gifts and perspectives, and that sociologists have therefore been focused on the minority case.

His three cultural vignettes are MBA students at Harvard and MIT, police sergeants and windsurfers. In each case, he offers accounts of individuals who, when left to their own devices in a new context, draw upon the cultural resources (e.g. values, norms) that they brought with them to the new context: "given a degree of similarity between an old and a new activity, the new will be approached in much the same way as the old. Lessons learned in the past(the culture of orientation) are sure to have value in the future if the recruit is conscious of similarity between the two and no concentrated efforts are made by others to destroy or make irrelevant such cognitive ties."