This article presents the first part of the results of two research carried out in 1995-1996 with eight manufacturing firms located in the country, comparing organisational and administrative strategies that have been being implemented and their impact on (a) the cultural identity and belief systems of labour subjects, and (b) the employment relationships that the various actors maintain. They were selected on the basis of being representative companies in Colombia of the competitive drive and adaptation to the globalisation of economic processes. The main objective of the research that linked competitiveness to organisational culture was to recognise through an adaptation of the ethnographic method, categories and processes valuable to analyse in particular dynamics of changes in the values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours present in organisations in the country. That approach adopted favoured the identification of two types of element. On the one hand, semi-otics (e.g. institutional physical structure and distribution, identification, clothing, etc.), and at the bottom the sociopsicological structure that manifests itself in multiple aspects of individual-individual relationships (such as division of labour and command, management design, distribution of authority, leadership and information) or individual-organisation (identification, control, decision-making, participation and communications). It is assumed that there is a strong dynamic of changes in a broad set of units that are significant for the creation of meaning. Among the main features common to cultural processes in the 8 organisations were trends to (1) the reduction of hierarchical levels in command pyramids from 10-12 to 4-7 on average, making wage and identity segmentation more pronounced; (2) the migration of employees conditional on the normality contained in the labour reform enacted in 1990; (3) the removal of selection and recruitment preferences at different levels; (4) the creation and strengthening of internal communications departments; (5) the systematic application of measuring and monitoring tools to the evolution of the working climate by alternating emphasis of behavioural or standardisation type; (6) a new socio-occupational stratification between less qualified and empirical pre-competitive operators, with a high average length of service – unreported; subcontracted technicians and multipurpose staff; and qualified professional employees, the latter two strata being slightly unidentified; (7) maintaining – in some cases, personal – patterns of centralisation of decision-making. The differentiation of cultural practices is expressed in nuanced intra and business-to-business manifestations, in aspects such as the distribution of authority, the meaning given to changes, the role of communication systems and the symbolic systems of organisations. New cultural conflicts would have as determinants (1) the impact of business transculturalisation; (2) the transition from practices that generated identity as something that happened spontaneously to the generalisation of practices for the construction of particular identities as interiorisation; (3) perspectives and ‘visions of management’ determining leadership styles; (4) the trend of changing time design; (5) increasing computerisation of personal checks. At the same time, the mobilisation capacity of various “cultural reform” instruments used has led to a growing ideologisation of the enterprise, such as pleastical spaces of homogenising value patterns. Research highlighted the need to deepen and defunction utilitarian approximation to the meaning of culture in organisations, and therefore to rethink the conceptions of “managing” cultural transformations. Instead, it would be more appropriate to promote the expansion of the study agenda on the phenomena of globalisation, multiculturalism, transnational businesses, the environment and local cultures in the context of Latin American and Colombian development, thematic areas where it is increasingly urgent to raise interest among people and entities concerned with the problems of human development and productivity.