The limits of the photographic act as a metaphor for the assessment of organizational culture. An ethnographic study of a high reliability organization

•Challenging the metaphor of assessment as an objective ‘photographic act’.•Ethnographic approach to study processes underlying culture assessment in HRO.•Stakeholders impact the design of the methodology (activities, instruments, etc.).•Data assessment and interpretation are not immune to the social processes.

Previous research on organizational culture has mainly adopted a realistic approach when describing organizations’ culture. Nonetheless, this approach does not take into consideration relevant factors that influence the process of describing and analyzing organizational culture. This study aims to discuss about critical aspects that conform organizational culture assessment methodologies. It offers a thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the organizational processes that underlie the design and development of the study of the culture of high reliability organizations using a social constructionist perspective (Gergen, 1985). More specifically, an ethnographic study using the metaphor of the assessment of organizational culture as a photographic act (snapshot) of culture in a given moment was carried out. The analysis showed some of the aspects that are taken for granted and are hidden within the metaphor of the photographic act, such as the choice of photographic device (the specific type of assessment techniques used), the framing and focus (the actors allowed in the photo and who will give voice to the culture involved) and the photo processing lab (the type of analysis and interpretation done on the data collected). These elements are important conditioners that make it possible to establish a presumably true image (a specific narrative) of organizational culture.