ERIKA TÓTH* THE REFLECTION OF NATIONAL CULTURES IN THE ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

The present article introduces an empirical research conducted at the European Commission, analysing its organisational culture and how that reflects national cultural diversity. Organisational culture in general received increasing attention since interest arose in humanities in the 1960s, followed by several cross-national organisational studies that linked differently managed organisational cultures with different corporate efficiency. (CINI, 2001) Few studies have however analysed the organisational culture of political institutions (CINI, 2001, SHORE, 2000, HOOGHE, 2001, etc) where problems are more complex as decision makers take more and different factors into considerations compared to the business world. In the present analysis of the European Commission the research project was particularly inter-ested how a supranational institution representing the whole community’s interest manages to create a common working culture for its employees coming from a di-verse national cultural background and how it takes these national cultural forces into account when creating its human resource policies. 1