'Doing' Organizational Culture in the Saturn Corporation

Organization Studies, Jan, 2001 by Terry L. Mills, Craig A. Boylstein, Sandra Lorean

The postmodern view of formal organizations demands a shift away from the assumption of organization as a circumscribed administrative-economic function. The postmodern view is impelled to examine organizations' formative role in the production of systems of rationality specific to individual corporate cultures, and the role of discourse and discursive techniques such as storytelling in the construction of institutional structures (Cooper and Burrell 1988). In that regard, this analysis of the Saturn Corporation focuses on that formative capacity in producing and reproducing the roles of producer, consumer and product in a way that taps into a need for community and affiliation that is acutely felt by many of the individuals involved. Through the mechanism of storytelling, the Saturn advertisements create a single family-like symbolic community between the Saturn corporation and the consumers of its product, linked together by a shared product -- the Saturn car.

Disillusionment with Consumer Culture

In a study by Vanden Bergh and Katz (1999: 13) it was found that Saturn had garnered more of the professional, executive and otherwise 'educated' customer market than any other major auto producer. Nearly 60 percent of Saturn owners make $50,000 or more per year. By targeting the professional and upper-middle-class market, Saturn has ironically produced a series of advertisements that tap into the middle-class disillusionment with consumer culture and the pervasive disconnectedness of a late modern/postmodern America, lacking in community affiliations beyond the nuclear family. Reacting to this exigency, the advertising offers-up the Saturn Corporation as a kind of corporate-sponsored community, and successfully references 'authentic' affiliative experience by using the metaphor of 'family'.

In the nineteenth century, individuals and families took advantage of plentiful nonfamilial networks that integrated them into work and social relations. In the previous two centuries, these 'networks beyond family' were extensive and often eclipsed the family in their importance to social and personal identity and fulfillment (Coontz 1992). For example, in colonial New England, there was little or no distinction between a man's identity and the duties he owed to his community (Rotundo 1993: 3). In more traditional times, people fulfilled themselves through public usefulness, and community ties were particularly strong, not only due to the social prescription to be 'useful', but also because of the intricate web of economic interdependence of all members of the community.

By the early 20th century, class stratification and the introduction of wage labour diffused community ties and obligations, but they still remained stronger than they are today (Coontz 1992). Among the working class, there were structural organizations that afforded opportunities for affiliation, identity and economic interdependence. They founded lodges, funeral aide societies, and death and sickness benefit associations. Also, they held parties and picnics to raise money for injured fellow workers, widows and orphans. Collections for such community activities were gathered at the factory gates on an almost daily basis (Coontz 1992: 71).