Organizational culture can be defined as the shared assumptions, values, beliefs, language, symbols, and meanings systems in an organization. This approach views organizations as a set of loosely structured symbols that are maintained and cocreated by a pattern of individual psychological factors and various interactional factors (such as language, behaviors, espoused values and physical artifacts) that shape shared (and unshared) values, beliefs, and assumptions within a given organization.

This entry overviews the history of the concept, the interpretive and management approaches, and the way organizational cultures vary by level and type. A discussion of cultural management reveals a focus on the inculcation of values and norms through communication processes of organizational identification visioning and framing. The entry closes with ongoing controversies about the theoretical approach.

The organizational culture movement rose in the early 1980s in response to previous system-oriented explanations. Researchers began to move beyond the transmission model of communication to instead examine how relationships, cultures, and organizations are constituted by communication. This linguistic turn signified not only a methodological shift from studying communication as a measurable outcome, but also a fundamental change in the way organizations were interpreted and known. Communication came to be viewed not just as another organizational variable to control, but as an important phenomenon in and of itself. From this point of view, researchers began to see how meanings do not reside in messages, channels, or screens, but they rather are socially constructed through interaction and sense-making activities.

Littlejohn, Stephen W and Karen A.Floss. (2009). Encyclopedia of Communication Theory.USA:SAGE.713

Penanggungjawab naskah :

Gayes Mahestu
Edwina Ayu Kustiawan