Organizational culturein private higher education: a case study of a new private universityin post-soviet azerbauan

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Ray McGHEE

(Ray, 1996). Anthony Giddens (1991) defines modernity as "the modes of social life or organization which emerged in Europe from about 17th century onwards and which subsequently became more or less worldwide in influence..." (p. 1). Modemity, according to Bauman (1992), is a perception of the world grounded in its universality concealing any particularism. The concept of modemity is inextricably attached to the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and the pursuit of pure knowledge for humanity's progress and improvement.

Conceptions of postmodemity are characterized by the pluralization öf knowledges, traditions, communities, and cultures. The universalization of science in modemity had previously elevated scientists' ways of seeing and knowing to the status of a metanarrative, possessing great power. In postmodernity, these metanarratives are challenged and debunked so that other "mini-narratives" can be given a voice. Instead of speaking of a uniform, universal culture of individuals, humanity is seen as a collection of individuals situated in their own unique social location and stamped with their own unique character. Postmodemity, like modemity, is a vigorously contested concept.

Some postmodem theorists have interpreted the collapse of communism as the demise of modemity in a postmodern age (Bauman, 1992; Arnason, 1993). They view the fall of communism in the former Soviet Union as a result of its inability to cope with the demands of postmodernity and could not absorb nor accommodate the plurality of global and domestic demands, resulting in a process of decomposition and collapse . From this perspective, communism was an aberrant embodiment of modemity's hopes: a society that was carefully designed, rationally managed, and thoroughly industrialized. In this view the collapse of communism is ultimately tied to its inability to adapt to the redefinition of human happiness in the postmodem period: the expansion of human needs and desires brought on by market forces. This explanation takes into account the intemal problems as well as the extemal pressure the former Soviet regime experienced during the final years of its existence.

In my view, global capitalism in the late twentieth century is a monolith that cannot be easily ignored and social theories using