Rethinking the harmonious family: Processes of social organization in a Korean corporation

Abstract

Social harmony and stability have been described as almost inborn aspects of Korean corporations. After the East Asian economic crisis of 1997, however, most Korean organizations faced new demands for increased productivity and competitiveness. The fragile balance between social harmony and individual competition led, in some Korean corporations, to social negotiation and struggles to define the aim and character of the collective effort. By describing the subsequent social dynamics of a Korean bank corporation, this article aims to show how the perception of group harmony as a stable entity in East Asian organizations is too static a concept for analysing the social organization. Rather, the dynamics of the continuous production and reproduction of social structures have to be taken into account in order to understand working life in Korean organizations.