Culture is a deep rooted phenomenon in  social systems. Culture and social environment distinguish human beings from other species (Skinner 1978)[1]. Culture in anthropology refers to socially trans­mitted patterns for behavior of a particular social group. Goldenough (in Kessing 1981) says that culture has been used to refer to the "regularly recurring pattern of life within a community”[2]. It can be inter­preted in terms of behavioral psychology as a sponta­neous gener­al­ization. It is said that an underlying difficulty in the study of culture is that we are not in the habit of analyzing cultural patterns; we are seldom even aware of them (Kessing 1981)[3]. It is similar to what Jung said under the concept of the collective unconscious. However, with some mental effort we can begin to become conscious of the codes that normally lie hidden beneath our everyday behavior. Similarly, Schein in relation to organizations defines culture as "taken-for-granted assump­tions". So culture can be interpreted as internal­ized pattern of organiz­ational behavior. The older is the organ­iz­ation, the stronger is the culture.

Taken-for-granted assumptions in organizations neither develop in a vacuum nor emerge overnight. It requires a detailed study to find out how & why those patterns exist in an organization. It grows through a long process and is conditioned in its own way because it is a mixture of many elements. There many factors that play role in developing organizational culture including formaliza­tion, individual interpretation of event, day to day interaction, informal grouping and conventions. These factors are the ones on which a culture is based upon. Organizations can have one of the three types of culture as shown in table 1. The alienated, positive, and negative feelings of participation lead to different types of culture as mentioned below.

FIGURE:1

 Aalienated Culture:

It indicates that conflicts are present; however participants follow the principles of the organization, though reluctantly. The basic assumption of such a culture is that the formal rules & regulations are more important than showing & resolving under­lying conflicts. It does not mat­ter if conflicts are resolved or not, but it is expected that participants must fulfil their formal & basic duties. There are more probabilities that the alienated culture we find in the rational but autocratic structure. The reason is that this structure supports single-loop learning and restricts participants’ voice action. The rational structure fosters non-accommodative behaviour which leads to rational type of informal grouping. Thus interaction between groups will be more calculative. Informal groups within organizations are source of providing cognitive dissonance to each other. The cognitive dissonance is reduced by raising alienation for other groups and organization.  

 Democratic Culture

The basic assumption behind democratic culture is that con­flicts should be brought into the surface so that they can be analyzed and solved amicably. The democratic culture gives provision to voice action which means that participants can be disagreed without developing hard feelings for each other. It relies more on accommodative behaviour which leads to collaborating style of resolving conflicts. The collaborating attitude favours democratic type of informal grouping which emphasizes on moral commitment. The groups are interactive in informal settings. Since it pro­vides participants’ outlets to channel their energies through voice action therefore decisions are made by convincing each other which not only reduces cognitive dissonance but increases confidence and friendship between individuals and groups in the organizations.

 Antagonistic Culture

Antagonistic culture paradigm is based on "what I am saying, is correct and should be accepted". This choice of "should be" is the key factor in raising antagonis­tic culture in the organization. Partici­pants are not open in their dealing and they develop an assumption in the long run which says "you do what you like; I’ll do what I like". Participants’ threats to each other are a common feature during interaction. In such kind of culture, participants are afraid of each other's presence, hence "no contact or less con­tact" is considered a solution to avoid cogni­tive dis­turbance.

This culture provides room for non-accommodative behavior with the provision of agitating voice action. Partici­pants reach a conflicting level where they are unconcerned with the development of organization. They are scared of others’ manipulation or afraid that they will lose power if they cooperate with the other person. They find their own actions legit­imate in all cases and use all kinds of means to defend them. A similar kind of view is presented by Schein (1969 in French and Bell 1990) in relation to group conflict. He says:  

"when there is tension, conflict, or competition among groups...., each group sees the other as an enemy....; each group describes the other in terms of negative stereo­types; interac­tion and communication between the two groups decrease, cutting off feedback and data input between; what intergroup communica­tion and interaction does take place is typically distorted and inaccurate; each group begins to prize itself and its products more positively and to denigrate the other group and its products.......under certain circum­stances the groups may commit acts of sabotage (of various kinds) against the other group[4]".

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