Int. J. Strategic Change Management, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2021 235 Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Adopting a grounded theory approach for managing corporate culture change Maryam Ebrahimi Germany Email: mar.ebrahimi@gmail.com Abstract: Since cultural change can be easily conceptualised as a social process, it is intuitively logical to use the grounded theory (GT) methodology to study organisational culture change. Providing a model of organisational culture change management in the National Petrochemical Company (NPC) was the purpose of the present study. This company is a large corporation which was split into smaller separate corporations. It is managed under new vision, mission, and leadership. The concepts and categories, in open coding, were obtained by breaking up the data collected from five employees. Then, in axial coding, they shaped the paradigm model in which the phenomenon is managing corporate cultural change. The components of the desired culture as the result of the model were innovation, humanism, goal orientation, and social responsibility. Finally, five theories of the core category that aggregates all categories were presented in selective coding. Keywords: grounded theory methodology; organisational culture; culture change; paradigm model; change management. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ebrahimi, M. (2021) ‘Adopting a grounded theory approach for managing corporate culture change’, Int. J. Strategic Change Management, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp.235–256. Biographical notes: Maryam Ebrahimi is an independent researcher. She has working experience as an Assistant Professor at some universities and a senior researcher in several industries. She is currently an independent researcher in Germany. Her post-doctoral research was in the area of Information Systems Management funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. She has oriented her studies towards systems science in business management. Her interest is the use of modelling and simulation methodologies for the purpose of policymaking. A few of her publications are ‘hybrid simulation approach for technological innovation policymaking in developing countries’ and ‘modelling and simulation techniques for improved business processes’. 1 Introduction Change practitioners attempt mainly to enhance the adaptive mechanisms within organisations. Change interventions deal more with cultural subsystem to pave the way to challenge the values and norms under which people operate. In this context, the culture is more receptive to change, and the realignment of the total organisational system into a more viable and satisfying configuration is facilitated. However, the focus of research efforts that are not explicitly concerned with planned change projects has been on the normative and symbolic aspects of organisations (Smircich, 1983). Since the initiatives