Managed by the other: cultural anxieties in two Anglo-Americanized Swedish firms

Abstract

This paper reports a study of how the co-workers in two major Swedish companies, Volvo Cars and AstraZeneca, respond to the cultural influences from an American and a British company, derived from an acquisition and a merger at the end of the 1990s. These responses are examined in terms of being ‘cultural anxieties’, a form of emotional coping with ambiguities regarding the future on the part of the co-workers. The paper shows that adapting to an alien culture is not a trivial matter but rather includes a series of re-evaluations of predominant values, norms and beliefs. The paper concludes that the organization culture literature needs to recognize the consequences of cultural changes, the movement from one largely taken-for-granted cultural regime to another, more heterogeneous and complex, and how co-workers cope with such experiences of uprooting enacted and agreed upon cultures.

Keywords:

• Organization culture
• cultural anxiety
• emotional management
• automotive industry
• pharmaceutical industry

Acknowledgements

The research project was financially supported by a grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. The authors would like to thank Sten Setterberg and Mats Sundgren and the interviewees for their participation in the research project.