Designer Deviance: Enterprise and Deviance in Cultural Change Programs

Authors

R Badham, Macquarie Graduate School of Management
Karin Garrety, University of WollongongFollow
V. Morrigan, University of WollongongFollow
M. Zanko, University of WollongongFollow
Patrick Dawson, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

16035

Publication Details

This article was originally published as: Badham, R, Garrety, K, Morrigan, V, Zanko, M & Dawson, P, Designer Deviance: Enterprise and Deviance in Cultural Change Programs, Organization, 2003, 10(4): 707-730. Copyright Sage Publications Ltd 2003.

Abstract

This article explores the value of investigating cultural change programmes as exercises in engineering deviance. It does so through a case study of an organizational development cultural change programme at Sprogwheels, a large Australian corporation. Drawing on and extending the classic work of Becker (1966), the article details how the programme combined a moral crusade against what it sought to have labelled as the ‘deviant conservatism’ of the existing organizational culture with social support for ‘deviant radicalism’, in the form of a counter-cultural, self-enterprising set of middle managers promoting corporate change. The article explores the complex and contradictory ideas of deviance that are deployed in such programmes, and examines the implications of a deviance analysis for an improved understanding of the dynamics of cultural change.