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Hi guys, welcome to
week 5, this week we are going to talk about cultural approaches in
organisational communication.
First, we need to
examine the prescriptive view of culture which contains two perspectives of “culture”
in organisations.
l Deal
& Kennedy’s “Strong Cultures”
l Peters
& Waterman’s “Excellent Cultures”
These two perspectives
conceptualise culture as a “thing” that belongs to an organisation. Having the “right”
kind of culture of culture can make or break an organisation.
But a number of scholars
reject the prescriptive view of culture, they see culture as the emerging and
something fragmented values, practices, narratives, and artefacts that make a
particular organisation “what it is.” An alternative approach have been taken
into account - the description and understanding of culture – and it elucidates that
cultures are very complex, are socially constructed through the communicative
interaction of organisational members, are composed of fragmented subcultural
unites, and may be fraught with ambiguity.
Edgar Schein, a management
scholar and consultant, proposed a very interesting theory with respect to
organisational culture, Schein argues that cultures can be best conceptualised
as having three levels: behaviours and artifacts, espoused organisational
values, and taken-for-granted assumptions about how the world works. Schein’s
theory is a very essential tool to understand organisational culture (Miller
2012, p.89-94).
Even if many scholars
rejected the perspective of “Strong Culture” proposed by Deal and Kennedy, in
my opinion, their strong culture is worthwhile to be interrogated.
According to Deal and
Kennedy (1982, cited in Miller 2012, p.83), there are four key components of a strong
culture:
1) Values
2) Heroes
3) Rites
and rituals
4) Cultural
network
In
my experience, business
success can be enhanced through the development of a ‘strong culture’. Rites
and rituals are key components of a strong culture. Deal and Kennedy suggest that rites
and rituals are the ceremonies through which an organisation celebrates its
values. Awarding outstanding employees in a corporate-wide banquet is a good
example of what Deal and Kennedy suggest of ‘Strong Cultures’. As I discussed
in last week, I did my internship in a very large English-training organisation
in China. I was very luck to become one of the comperes of the annual end-year
convention (usually hold as a large corporate-wide banquet with many
interesting components). Awarding outstanding employees is the most exciting
component of the banquet, when employees got awarded, the first sentence they
uttered is ‘much appreciate for the company in which my diligence and sacrifice
can be recognised.’ They became heroes in that organisation and the
organisation periodical newsletters would then advocate the spirits and beliefs
held by award-winners (cultural network).
Thus, I think this is quite obvious
that the employees who get awarded are very happy to be part of the company
because their performance in the past year are acceptable and validated. So,
their productivity could be improved because the culture of the company
provides a ‘rewarding’ atmosphere to its members.
I also recommend you
guys to browse a blog article that provides an in-depth analysis concerning
organisational culture. Very interesting one.
“On organisational
culture change”, by Chris Mowles.
References:
Miller, K 2012, Organisational communication – approaches
and processes, 6th edn, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston.
Mowles, C 2013, ‘On organisational
culture change’, blog post, Complexity
and Management Centre, 7 October, viewed 10 November 2013,
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