Examining organizational culture in a systemic business-education partnership

grantor: University of TorontoOver the past two decades, 'Partnerships' involving public education and business have proliferated across North America. While this phenomenon has become the subject of considerable examination, discussion and debate, there remains a significant gap in our understanding about organizational culture in these linkages. To address that gap, this dissertation has sought to determine how to study organizational culture in such a complex interorganizational relationship, and what characteristics and conceptions of organizational culture can be revealed through such an examination. The locus of this five year investigation was The Toronto Learning Partnership (TLP), an interorganizational network connecting seventeen area school boards and hundreds of Canadian companies. The lived, inter-cultural experience of TLP participants was uncovered through extensive fieldwork and a variety of data-gathering techniques. Employing a 'cultural relativist' viewpoint, the particular nature of TLP was ethnographically represented in the form of a case study that sequentially chronicled its personalities, development and operation. In addition, through the application of a 'cultural rationalist' approach, observed and perceived cultural manifestations were juxtaposed in tables under fourteen categories of working life. By means of constant comparison within and between these two 'modes of knowing', grounded theory was developed to both describe and explain culture 'of' and 'in' this partnership. The Learning Partnership proved to be a window through which six distinct conceptions of culture could be witnessed, including: the distinct and different ' organizational cultures' of TLP, business and education; distinct and different 'organizational sub-cultures' within TLP, business and education; the similar 'trans-organizational sub-culture' of management across business and education; 'cultural ambiguity' with respect to roles in TLP, business and education; and a 'cultural mosaic' reflecting and explaining all of the aforementioned cultural forms. This dissertation also discusses some implications of its cultural findings relative to the literature on organizational culture, to the act of research and to The Learning Partnership. The work represents a new means by which different organizational cultures can be studied, simultaneously.Ph.D