DETECTING CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE IN ORGANIZATION MEMBERS PERSONAL CONSTRUCT SYSTEMS

This study examines organization members' personal construct system co ntent to identify I type of cultural knowledge: recipe knowledge. S. S ackmann (1991) defined recipe knowledge as organization members' cogni tions about what ought and ought not be done. Employees of a media org anization (N = 57) completed the liked and disliked coworker version o f the Role Category Questionnaire (W. Crockett, 1965). Using J. Meyer and B. Sypher's (1993) coding scheme, categories of descriptors were i dentified. The themes emphasized by respondents indicated what organiz ation members should and should not do. Differences in content themes by tenure, department, and hierarchical status suggested that these fa ctors influenced the acquisition of interpersonal recipe knowledge. Im plications of these findings are discussed.