Cultural dynamics in evolutionary sociology and cultural anthropology
In the 1880s, Lester Ward proposed that evolutionary mechanisms evolve. Evolutionary anthropologists applied this concept to cultural evolution. For example, Sahlins and Service (1960 in Hatch, 2004) saw general evolution as the types of cultures that emerge through the general direction of humanity and specific evolution as the adaptations that occur in response to particular environments.
Cultural anthropologists typically denied evolution but reached a similar conclusion: understanding concrete cultural change requires defining its underlying processes. With a focus on cultural change, early anthropologists of cultural dynamics understood the importance of considering change with stability while noting that different cultures move at different rates. This suggests two important keys for unlocking organizational dynamics.
- Just as change is a constant force in humanity, change is also constant in organizational cultures.
- Just as different parts of human culture change at different rates, parts of organizational culture change while other parts remain stable; stability and change simultaneously exist in organizational culture.
Linton (1936 in Hatch, 2004) described how a culture contains similarities and differences. Universals of culture are the behaviors shared across the culture. Specialties of culture explain the behaviors of a specialized group. Alternatives of culture demonstrate behaviors that society accepts as valid, but that cut across diversity classification. Individual peculiarities are experimental forms of behavior, which serve as sources of cultural innovation. Linton argued that cultural elements have four interrelated qualities that can vary as cultural elements change: form, meaning, use, and function. These cultural elements dynamically interact with cultural specialties, peculiarities, and alternatives to innovate cultural change.
Herskovits (1948 in Hatch, 2004) identified two types of change: change from within and change from the outside. Anthropology finds more evidence supporting change from the outside but asserts that change seems to generalize to change from within. For example, in studying the introduction of European culture into Africa, Malinouski (1945 in Hatch, 2004) argued that change among institutions was mutual, with each culture satisfying needs in different ways with different techniques using the same resources. This exchange process is essential for organizational researchers because it explains how cultural change is not simply the consequence of adding or mixing two cultures but a complex reaction that creates autonomous change leading to new cultural realities.
Malinouski (1945 in Hatch, 2004) recognized stability as a counterforce to change, noting that established cultural elements acted as stabilizing forces that limited the emergence of the new system. This limitation causes three possible products of contact between cultures: conflict, cooperation, or compromise. Cultural change through planned incursions becomes domination of one group by another. In this case, resistance emerges in the struggle for domination among the groups. This means that resistance is not in the culture but that the domination in cross-cultural relationships is accountable for resistance.
Applied to organizational change, this cross-cultural perspective helps differentiate followers and leaders as belonging to different cultures, explaining the powerful resistance that can occur when management implements change interventions. Understanding the power relations suggests that a better approach to cultural change is to acknowledge and participate in the dynamic processes that already exist in the culture, thus fitting the intervention into the flow of change and stability inherent in the culture. This requires a simultaneous focus on what to preserve and change, innovating cultural change by introducing new meaning through dynamic interaction.