Paramount is one of the classical Hollywood film studios, with roots going back to the silent era, and in recent years owned by the Viacom media and entertainment conglomerate. It lately made news by its purchase of Dreamworks, a major independent film company, co-founded by Steven Spielberg, that had previously aspired to be the first new "major" studio in Hollywood in decades.
On the surface, this appeared to be a coup for Paramount, which has struggled in recent years for success at the box office. In fact, however, the action appears to have been something of a desperation move (Epstein, 2005). A new top management at Paramount, installed by Viacom's Sumner Redstone, cancelled most of the projects accepted by the previous management. This action turned out to leave Paramount with very little in the "pipeline" of forthcoming films, and it bought Dreamworks largely in order to provide itself with something to sell over the next two years.
Epstein noted in December, 2005, that Paramount would in effect become Dreamworks, even though most of the Dreamworks people would lose their jobs. As it turns out (by personal communication from a former Paramount executive who understandably wishes to remain anonymous), it is instead Paramount's organizational structure that will be eviscerated, with consolidations of positions favoring those who came over from Dreamworks.
In order to understand the implications for institutional culture, it is necessary to say something about the structure of the film industry. Corporate or other institutional cultures are normally regarded as existing largely in isolation, competing with industry rivals but having little else to do with them. Hollywood, however, is arguably the prototype of a number of industries in which the collective culture of the industry as a whole exerts as much or more influence on workers than the culture of a specific firm.
It is indicative, in fact, that...