Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership

Chapter 12. Organizational Symbols and Culture

For eight hundred years neighborhoods in Siena, Italy, have competed twice each summer in a horse race known as the palio. Each side has its club, hymn, costumes, museum, and elected head. A crowd of more than a hundred thousand gathers to witness a seventy-five-second event that people live for all year. Riding under banners of the goose, seashell, or turtle, jockeys attack one another with whips and hang on desperately around ninety-degree turns. The first horse to finish, with or without rider, wins. "The winners are worshipped. The losers embarrass their clan" (Saubaber, 2007, p. 42). In July 2007, twenty-two-year-old Giovanni Atzeni won in a photo finish. His followers were ecstatic. A young ...