The Macro-Structures and Micro-Processes of Cultural Mixing: Exploring Opportunities for Synthesis

A focus on culture – defined as shared meaning systems that stabilize action among groups of actors by anchoring interpretive and evaluative processes – is a key feature among macro organizational theories. These theories have all argued that mixing elements of multiple meaning systems is problematic because it creates ambiguity about what ‘type’ an organization is and, in doing so, may expose it to conflicting internal and external expectations for appropriate action. Despite these hazards, combining elements from different meaning systems – or cultural mixing – is a common practice, implicating both organizations and their products. In this symposium, we suggest that there may be significant potential to contribute to the study of cultural mixing by integrating insights from micro-level theories of motivation, cognition, and sensemaking with extant macro perspectives. To this end, our aim is to highlight the unique strengths of both micro and macro approaches for the study of cultural mixing as well as ...