“The reality of the world hangs on the thin thread of conversation”
— Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman
Organizations have cultures. Someone came up with the bright idea that you might be able to use the culture to organize an organization, instead of the other way around. But to do so, you need to understand the corporate culture, the organizational culture. That isn’t easy, As Conrad and Poole (2012) noted: “Cultures are complicated because they are both conscious and nonconscious , individual and collective, stable (thus comforting) and changing (thus exciting and frightening , constraining and enabling , and located in both our minds/perceptions and in our actions and communication” (Location 5555).
Cultures are contained, but they have cultural traffic from people entering and leaving, and subcultures within them of people who are a part of, yet different, from the mainstream of the culture. So how do you use these to motivate and control.
Usually it starts with socializing the newcomers. socialization introduces them to the expectations of the culture. From there the individual goes from externalization, to objectification, to internalization of the culture.
A person’s identity ends up getting tied to their society and its accepted assumptions. This creates a reality shock when they enter a new culture. People who move between cultures more often learn to adapt and regulate the reality shock better than those who don’t.
Organizations use symbolism as part of cultural organization. Metaphors take on meaning for the culture as it is associated with the organisation. Stories are told that help people feel part of the group. Myths and mythologies start to form that contain the cultural truths of the organization.
But they are also held together by rituals and ceremonies. Rituals are informal individual acts that lend meaning, while ceremonies are formal group events. Ceremonies fall into five main categories: Ceremonies of Passage, Degradation ceremonies, Enhancement ceremonies, Renewal ceremonies, and Integration ceremonies.
The big difference between traditional or relational strategies and the cultural strategy is that the former require obtrusive motivational and control systems. The latter uses unobtrusive controls and self-serveillance.
So the question comes down, which is better, if any, and whether it is actually possible to control an organization’s culture successfully to achieve specific ends.
References
Conrad, C. & Poole, M. S. (2012). Strategic organizational communication in a global economy. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
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