Study unit 1.

3
Die Res van Littlejohn & Foss se leeswerk
Organisational Culture

 Emphasise the way people construct an organisational reality.

 Looks at the meaning and values of the members.
 Examines the way individuals use stories, rituals, symbols, and other types of activity
to produce and reproduce a set of understandings.
 Organizations create a shared reality that distinguishes them from organisations with
other cultures.
 Shared meaning, shared understanding and shared sense-making are all different
ways of describing culture.
 Culture- a process of reality construction that allows people to see and understand
events, actions, objects utterances or situations in distinctive ways.
4 domains of organisational culture:
1. Ecological context- the physical world- location, time, history, and the social context
in which the organisation operates.
2. Networks/differential interaction- culture consists of networks.
3. Collective understanding- common ways of interpreting events- the content of
culture-ideas, ideals, values, and practices
4. Individual domain
Organisational culture is sometimes just made through everyday interaction within the
organisation.
What do organisations use to create and display their understanding of events within
the organisation?

 Many relevant indicators: relevant constructs and related vocabulary, perceived facts
practices or activities, metaphors, stories; and rites and rituals.
 All these are performances since they display the lived experiences of groups.
 4 Characteristics of Communication Performances
1. They are interactional:
o social actions, people participate.
2. Performances are contextual-
o Can’t be viewed as independent acts but are always embedded in
the larger frame of activity.
o Performances reflect and produce their context.
3. Performances are episodes.
o Events with beginnings and an end
o Performances can identify the episodes and distinguish them from
others.
4. Performances are improvised.
o Flexibility in communication episodes
o Although the same performance may be given again and again,
they never repeat in the same way.
 Organisational communication performances

1. Rituals
o repeated regularly.
o Familiar and routine
o Bv. staff meetings
o NB- constantly renews our understanding of our common
experiences and they provide legitimacy to what we are thinking,
feeling, and doing.
o Types of rituals: personal, task, social, organisational rituals (entire
group participate)
2. Passion
o Workers put on performances that make otherwise dull and routine
duties interesting or passionate
o Bv. Storytelling
3. Sociality
o Reinforce a common sense of propriety and make use of social
rules within organisations.
o Create a sense of identification
o Bv inside jokes
o Privacies are sociality performances that communicate sensitivity
and privacy (Confessing, consoling, and criticizing) By as ek by die
werk jou vertel van my en harry se verhouding. Dan engage ons in
privacies
4. Organisational politics
o Create and reinforce notions of power and influence
5. Enculturation
o Processes of teaching the culture to organisational members
o Ongoing
o Bv orientation of newcomers