Cultural Approaches

1
Cultural Approaches

• COMM 254 Organizational Communication

2
What is Culture?

• A complicated patchwork of meaning including
• Assumptions
• Values
• Artifacts
• Symbols
• Rites and rituals
• Behaviors
• Etc.

3
Who Studies Culture?
Anthropologists
Organizational Communication Researchers
4
A Prescriptive View of Culture

• An organization has a culture!
• Based on a machine/organism metaphor.
• Culture is objective, facilitates effective
  organizational functioning, and should be
  managed.

5
What Culture Do We Want?

• According to Deal and Kennedy, a strong
  culture!! (p. 97)
• According to Peters and Waterman, an excellent
  culture!! (p. 98)

6
Limitations of a Prescriptive View

• Culture is more complicated
• Culture is emergent
• Culture is not unitary
• Culture is often ambiguous

7
An Interpretive View of Culture

• An organization is (not has) a culture.
• Based on a culture/society metaphor.
• Culture is intersubjective, facilitates sense
  making, and should be understood.

8
Cultures as Webs of Meaning

• Webs are created through action.
• Webs allow for action.
• Webs restrict action.

9
Edgar Schein

• Wrote Organizational Culture and Leadership
  (1985).
• Developed a three-level model of culture (pp. 107
  111).
• Suggested strategies for considering cultural
  artifacts/behaviors (p. 108).