Graduation Year
2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Granting Department
Anthropology
Major Professor
Roberta Baer
Keywords
employee satisfaction, OCAI, online communication, organizational identification, social capital
Abstract
This dissertation presents an investigation of a rarely studied business entity in the cross disciplinary literature on organizational culture, a completely virtually organized firm. Subscribing to a conviction that any culture can only be understood through an approach that uncovers the lived experiences of its members, I employ the traditional anthropological method of participant observation as my foundational data gathering technique. In an effort to help engage anthropology with the cross disciplinary organizational culture literature generally, I also use two well-known methods of corporate culture assessment from the management sciences. I provide a number of recommendations to the sponsors of the research for addressing problems that relate directly to worker morale and performance and which, consequently, impact the company's overall potential for success. Some of these problems are unique to this particular company while other issues that I identify, such as weak organizational identification among employees, loose networks of social capital between co-workers, employee training and nurturing deficits, email overload impacts on employee productivity and regard for organizational leaders, and the encroachment of work on personal time, are problems likely to be encountered by members of other virtual work organizations. As such, my findings should be of interest to applied researchers who study these fast-growing types of work arrangements.
Scholar Commons Citation
Avery, Jennifer Laurel, "Becoming the Corporate Native...Virtually: An Ethnography and Corporate Culture Assessment of a Virtual Organization" (2012). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/4281
