Songs of The IBM (1931-)

“[Since the year 1900], the gatherings and conventions of our IBM workers have expressed in happy songs the fine spirit of loyal cooperation and good fellowship which has promoted the signal success of our great IBM Corporation in its truly International Service for the betterment of business and benefit to mankind.

In appreciation of the able and inspiring leadership of our beloved President, Mr. Thos. J. Watson, and our unmatchable staff of IBM executives, and in recognition of the noble aims and purposes of our International Service and Products, this edition of IBM songs solicits your vocal approval by hearty cooperation in our song-fests at our conventions and fellowship gatherings.” (from introduction)

Publisher International Business Machines Corporation, New York, 1931
45 pages

music clips
publisher and more information about IBM’s music and bands
commentary (Rob Weir)

PDF (1931 edition)
PDF (partial reproduction of the 1935 edition)
PDF (1937 edition)
PDF (1940 edition)

Gideon Kunda: Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation (2006)

Engineering Culture is an award-winning ethnography of the engineering division of a large American high-tech corporation. Now, this influential book—which has been translated into Japanese, Italian, and Hebrew—has been revised to bring it up to date. In Engineering Culture, Gideon Kunda offers a critical analysis of an American company’s well-known and widely emulated “corporate culture.” Kunda uses detailed descriptions of everyday interactions and rituals in which the culture is brought to life, excerpts from in-depth interviews and a wide variety of corporate texts to vividly portray managerial attempts to design and impose the culture and the ways in which it is experienced by members of the organization.

The company’s management, Kunda reveals, uses a variety of methods to promulgate what it claims is a non-authoritarian, informal, and flexible work environment that enhances and rewards individual commitment, initiative, and creativity while promoting personal growth. The author demonstrates, however, that these pervasive efforts mask an elaborate and subtle form of normative control in which the members’ minds and hearts become the target of corporate influence. Kunda carefully dissects the impact this form of control has on employees’ work behavior and on their sense of self.

In the conclusion written especially for this edition, Kunda reviews the company’s fortunes in the years that followed publication of the first edition, reevaluates the arguments in the book, and explores the relevance of corporate culture and its management today.

Publisher Temple University Press, 2006
Labor And Social Change series
ISBN 1592135471, 9781592135479
320 pages

publisher
google books

PDF