Instrumentalization of psychological criticism and the production of moldable subjectivities: Organizational climate and Organizational culture
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Abstract
Objective. To analyze the installation of the concepts of organizational climate and organizational culture within the field of management theory, in the context of the dominance of the functionalist managerialist paradigm, addressing the articulations and modulations these concepts establish with said paradigm and examining their effects. Method. Documentary review based on the genealogy of the present proposed by Nikolas Rose, tracing the foundational texts of George H. Litwin and Robert A. Stringer, as well as Edgar H. Schein, and identifying their subsequent uses through citation analysis. Results. The success of their installation relied on quantification devices —psychometric scales and attitudinal inventories— that promised to render legible the social and subjective processes previously overlooked by organizational theory, thereby converting them into administrable fields incorporated into managerial control. Discussion. The installation of these concepts reveals how critique can be assembled into the functionalist managerialist logic without transforming the practices it contests. A transformative critique requires challenging the ontological and epistemological core of the theories under scrutiny, as well as their practical translations and effects —particularly in Latin American contexts, where inequality and labor precarity demand more complex and situated approaches to the study of organizational life.
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