last updated 9/20/2016
Why Use a Cultural View
Lee McGaan
A Cultural Definition of Organization:
"An organization is the organizing activities of its
members" (as created and reflected in Communication).
Managers who use a cultural view
hope to resolve the central dilemma by accomplishing the organization's
need for coordination and control through shared meanings, goals, and commonly
understood values and procedures. A shared, strong culture allows individual
members to coordinate actions through shared understandings while making their
own decisions (meeting their own needs) about how to accomplish the
organizations goals.
Implications:
- Organizational membership consists of those in a social collectivity who identify
themselves as members or participants
- Organizational structure consists of the communicative relationships established by
membership. The "shape" is continually evolving
- Since organization = communication, the organization is a communication
event built on communicative behaviors/acts which produce both the sense
of membership, the organizational structure, and the means by which
members interact.
- The "meaning" of an organization is the sum of its
communicative transactions and the organizational environment.
- Neither organizational structure nor "cultural" practices
(behaviors and meanings) come first – the
social dialectic brings both into existence simultaneously.
Why use the cultural view?
- It accesses the meanings of the organization in terms of the people who
are the organization. Organizational culture focuses on communication.
- It focuses on both everyday/ informal and formal communication
- It goes beyond the rational actor model of business management
- It allows insights into individuals' understandings of things at all
levels