Erfolgreiche Koordination durch Kultur? Herrschaftsmythen der Frühen Neuzeit und die Organizational-Culture-These

Abstract

Herrschaftsmythen können als spezifische Gestaltungselemente einer Organisationskultur interpretiert werden. Sie waren in den frühneuzeitlichen Systemen Mittel des politischen Zusammenwirkens, gerichtet auf Integration und Definition der jeweiligen Organisation. Gegenstand der Untersuchung sind neun frühneuzeitliche Mythen, darunter der Roi Soleil, Neues Israel und Wilhelm Tell. Hinterfragt wurden wahrgenommene Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den neun Mythen, deren integrative und revolutionäre Muster sowie die unterschiedlichen Grade der Integration und Definition innerhalb der verwandten politischen Systeme. Tatsächlich bestätigen sich durch die Befragung die Auffassungen, dass das sehr integrative Muster eines Mythos und sein hoher Grad kollektiver Orientierung mit einem republikanischen politischen Kontext korrespondieren. Hauptsächlich das integrative Muster führte zu signifikanten Wirkungen der politischen Integration. (prh)

'Creating a myth was an often used and seemingly successful strategy of early modern sovereigns and power-bearing social elites to legitimate their claim on government and to establish a mechanism, which created collective identity. Through myths, the sovereign's predestination to rule could have probably been communicated in an easy and understandable manner. Viewing early modern political systems as organizations, the organizational-culture-approach shows, that myths of power have been specific appearences of organizational culture and explains, that they worked as means of political coordination, raising both integration and definition of the organization. In order to get some quantitative information about the characteristics of nine early modern myths of power and their respective effects, the instrument of expert interrogation was tested. Undergraduate students with specific knowledge in early modern myths and their political context were asked to evaluate within a structured questionnaire their pairwise perceived similarity between myths, the degrees of collective orientation, revolutionary and integrative design of the myths and the degrees of integration and definition within the affiliated political systems. This data was used to construct a graphical representation of myths via multidimensional scaling and to test the impact of mythological characteristics on degrees of integration and definition of the respective political systems. Following the experts' perceptions, it was both the very integrative design of a myth and its high degree of collective orientation, which corresponded with a republican political context. But it was mainly the integrative design, that yielded significant effects on political integration.' (author's abstract)