last updated 9/12/2010
Culture is Created and
Maintained by Communication
Organizational culture is more
a research-based approach to understanding how organizations develop
and function than it is a "method" of management. However, by
viewing organizations as cultures it is possible tounderstand how the
organization can obtain coordination and control while alos allowing
opportunity for individuals to meet their needs - a way of resolving
the central dilemma without sacrificing one side or the other.
A
Definition of Organizational Culture
- A system of shared meanings and patterns of interaction
- expressed through various symbolic forms
- which hold people together
Culture makes sense of organizational reality and creates it.
- The dialectic of organizational culture and individual identity.
[ culture <--> individual
]
- Organizational culture is partially
a product of national culture
Organizations
don't have cultures they
ARE cultures!
- Members share how to perceive, interpret and explain
and perform within the organization.
- Cultures are historical, including:
- past events and their interpretations (as
typified by heroes and in rites and rituals)
- expectations, formal and informal (values)
- symbolic forms (rituals, myth, metaphors)
- Organizations don't have a culture (It's
not an owned property.) The organization; IS a culture.
- Although organizations have (intentionally or
not) a "cultural network" (a communication systems that
transmits and reinforces the culture) still, managing culture is hard to do.
- Actions are symbolic as well as instrumental
- Organizations have sub-cultures. ( e.g. athletic teams, fraternities,
sales groups, etc.
Features
of Organizational Culture
- It is learned
- It is shared
- It is trans-generational and cumulative (over time)
- It is symbolic
- It is patterned
- It is adaptive