Kaarten: C&O Week 3 Part 1 | Quizlet

Triggers for the emergence of Cultural approach

1. Started from criticisms of scientific management
2. After age of bureaucratic organisation;
internal trigger (micro) - crisis in management-labour relations ,
external trigger (macro) - increased global competition for US firms
3. Rejection of bureaucratic form as a conformist, alienating work environment - desire for new approach to reflect bigger complexities of life (ideologies)
4. Emergence of gossip, joking between colleagues

Sources the cultural approach started from

1. Notion that one should study organisations to make better employees rather than increase organisational efficiency
2. Interpretive tradition that focused on language and comm as principal mediums through which social reality is created

Common starting points about culture

1. Culture is omnipresent - difficult to define
2. Culture is a source of identity and conflict - often misunderstood and difficult to change
3. Culture is a multi-level construct - with interplay of levels (Cultural variability - Hofstede)
4. Organisations are socially embedded and have a culture (or multiple cultures)

Consequences of cultural approach

Paradigm shift in org comm, with radically different conceptual tools to examine organisations - seen org in terms of communication (as structures of meaning created through symbolic acts of members, rather than existing outright)

Important elements to Geertz's definition of culture

1. Culture is conceptually semiotic and meaning-centered (culture doesn't exist in peoples heads but in the shared activites that people engage in
2. Webs of significance duality - culture is formed by members, and they actively participate in culture, shaping and limiting the members
3. Culture is dynamic and ongoing
4. Culture is interpreative and qualitative

Thick description

The development of narrative accounts that provide rich insight into the complex meaning patterns that underlie people's collective behaviour e.g closing of baseball park

Organisational culture

A system of meaning that guides the construction of reality in a social community

Duality of culture

Culture is created by people through actions and crating meaning.
On the other hand, culture is challenged by people and changes peoples understandings of meanings - we make it but then it has a life of its own and we abide by it

Duality of culture and communication

Communication shapes culture; culture shapes communication

Functions of culture

1. Guides behaviour and communicates the way we do things around here
2. Holds the organisation together - members share values and make members feel like they belong

3 layers of organisational culture (Schein)

1. Artifacts at top - buildings, dress, logos, traditions
2. Espoused/Stated values and beliefs - hidden part of org culture that lies in mindset of members
3. Underlying assumptions and norms - learned, shared, taken-for-granted assumptions

Manifestations of organisational culture

1. Southwest Airlines - fun/bring your quirky self to work
2. Google - brign creative self
3. Zappos - business philosophy built on happiness

What does culture allow organisations to do

1. Control - once all employees share reality of organisation, they are guided by norms of appropriate behaviour instead of a direct control - more ideological control
2. Foster identification among employees - glue that binds members together; shapes employee behaviour and decision-making
3. Organisational performance - fosters commitment, strengthens corporate image
4. Demarcate - Set and maintain boundaries (insider and outsider; between organisations

Two perspectives on organisational communication

1. Transmission - sees organisations as an container and communication as a tool in the container
2. Constitutive - sees organisations as complicated communication processes and meaning is creating through negotiation among organisational members

Three perspectives on organisational culture

1. Pragmatist / Functionalist - culture is a variable and something an org has/can be changed (one culture)
2. Purist / Symbolist - Culture is metaphor and cannot be manipulated or possessed by Org (>1 culture)
3. Emancipatory - Expose organisational wrongdoings and exploitation of working

Organisations from a cultural perspective

Organisations are systems of beliefs, values and norms that guide everyday behaviour

Organisational communication from a cultural perspective

The collective creation, maintenance and transformation of organisational meanings and organisational expectations - comm is the medium through which orgs are constructed by humans

Role of managers in pragmatist approach

To diagnose and change an organisations culture to meet corporate goals - culture is a means by which ends (e.g profit) are reached

Functions culture has in an organisation

1. Creating shared identity among organisation members
2. Generating employee commitment to the organisation e.g Nike EKINS
3. Enhancing organisational stability (strong culture and shared identity)
4. Serving as a sense-making device (shared norms and principles among employees)

Culture-as-root metaphor

Organisation is a culture

Why org cultures cannot be manipulated according to purist approach

1. Org culture is emergent and not shaped by managers but by people's needs and experiences
2. It is impossible to establish causal connections between culture and organisational outcomes like employee performance - culture is too messy to quantify or predict
3. Orgs do not have a single culture
4. Attempts to manage culture manipulate employees emotions and are therefore unethical

Ethnography

Studying naturally occurring, everyday behaviour and communication processes

Symbolic convergence

Individual realities converging to collectively create a social reality

Cultural expressions

the various symbols, conversations and artifacts that are the visible manifestation of a given culture

Expressions of culture and sense-making / The symbolic forms of culture

1. Relevant constructs
2. Facts
3. Practices
4. Vocabulary
5. Metaphors
6. Rites and rituals
7. Stories

Relevant constructs

The objects, individuals and events that punctuate the daily life of an organisation and allow members to structure their experiences e.g for students there are grades, meetings, assignments, partying etc

Facts

A body of social knowledge shared by members of an org culture to help members naviagate the culture - not objective truths but shared understanding about what is significant e.g cigar smokers saying smoking is not harmful

Practices

Situated and goal-oriented human activites that members must engage iin to accomplish organnising e.g meetings

Vocabulary

Jargon that describes important aspects of the culture - usually signifies membership of the culture

Metaphors

Words not simply describing the world that are a fundamental part of our perceptions of the world

Rites and Rituals

Repeated activities that are rendered particularly meaningful for members of a culture - emerge for a need for predictability and order in members' lives

Organisational storytelling

Important communication processes that can significantly shaoe organisation members' sense-making efforts e.g IBM CEO abiding to same rules as everybody else

Uniqueness paradox

How stories with the same scripts can occur across a range of organisations in both positive and negative versions - stories intended to express organisations uniqueness actually occur across a range of organisations, making them not unique e.g US college stories about statues and virgins

Emancipatory approach to culture (Alvesson)

Works to expose the means by which organisational cultures dominate and exploit workers and then, in turn, foster transformations in those cultures

Features of storytelling

1. Very important way for humans to produce and reproduce social reality
2. Not just random description of events, but powerful sense-making devices that shape our perspective about organisations
3. Feature a moral imperative - value of hard work, learning from mistakes
4. Exhibit a uniqueness paradox - in effort to be unique, we find same theme among range of organisations (start small, beat all odds, persistence)