Enterprise as Cultural Community

Abstract

A company operates a business and engages in profit-making activities, though it has as its face a cultural community. As an organizational structure, a company is a group which shares particular values and ways of behavior. Taking Sony as an example, this chapter explores initiation process into a company. It identifies Sony’s distinctive features and discusses its character as a cultural community in relation to the lifetime employment. History of the initiation ceremony is introduced first, and then seating rules and dress codes are analyzed. Welcome speeches by CEOs are discussed in the light of a community, bound together by common fate. In the end, van Gennep’s theory of rites de passage is applied to interpret company rituals.