Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Managing culture at British Airways: hype, hope and reality

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dc.creator Grugulis, C. Irena
dc.creator Wilkinson, Adrian
dc.date 2008-12-05T14:31:44Z
dc.date 2008-12-05T14:31:44Z
dc.date 2002
dc.identifier Grugulis, C.I. and Wilkinson, A. (2002). Managing culture at British Airways: hype, hope and reality. Long Range Planning. Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 179-194.
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10454/955
dc.description Yes
dc.description Nearly twenty years after the publication of the (in)famous In Search of Excellence, the notion of `cultural change¿ within organisations continues to excite attention. This is readily understandable, since cultural interventions offer practitioners the hope of a universal panacea to organisational ills and academics an explanatory framework that enjoys the virtues of being both partially true and gloriously simple. Such a combination is apparent in the way that many attempts to shape organisational culture are presented to the public: as simple stories with happy endings.1 This article attempts to rescue a fairy-tale. The story of British Airways is one of the most widely used inspirational accounts of changing culture. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s it was used to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of pleasure and profits2 in celebratory accounts where culture change is presented as the only explanation for the transformation that occurred. This corrective makes no attempt to deny the very substantial changes that took place in BA. Rather, it sets these in context noting the organisation¿s environment at the time of the transformation, the structural changes that took place and observes the impact that such changes had over the long term.3¿5
dc.language en
dc.relation http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0024-6301(02)00036-5
dc.rights © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.
dc.subject British Airways
dc.subject Cultural Change
dc.subject Organisational Change
dc.subject Organisational Culture
dc.title Managing culture at British Airways: hype, hope and reality
dc.type Article


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