I'm guessing that most people in the organisation theory world are somewhat familiar with Geert Hofstede's work on national culture. I've just facilitated a course on cultural change with a group of twenty people of various nationalities and a range of organisations. The two days was threaded throughout with questions about the role of leaders in changing an organisation's culture. The whole power/distance thing came up. (One of the dimensions that Hofstede talks about).
In Hofstede's thinking (if we apply his national typology to an organisation) thinking of culture as part of the power/distance dynamic looks attractive. He says: 'This dimension expresses the degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. The fundamental issue here is how a society handles inequalities among people. People in societies exhibiting a large degree of Power Distance accept a hierarchical order in which everybody has a place and which needs no further justification. In societies with low Power Distance, people strive to equalise the distribution of power and demand justification for inequalities of power.'