Strategic Communication in Organizations (SCiO), exam 1, week 1-6. Lecture notes, assignments (study questions), summary of all articles, exam question example with answers provided by teacher.
Strategic Communication in Organizations (SCiO) – Exam 1, week 1 – 6
- Lecture notes + assignments (study questions) of week 1 to 6
- Exam question examples + answers
Lecture 1. Organizational culture – Notes
Schein’s model
Artifacts and products – What do you see?
Norms and values – What is acceptable behaviour?
Underlying assumptions – Why is this behaviour desirable?
Organizational climate emerges in organizations through a social information process
that concerns the meaning employees attach to the policies, practices, and procedures they
experience and the behaviors they observe being rewarded, supported, and expected.
> Climate is tangible, can grasp it on the surface, visible, measured through survey.
Organizational culture concerns the implicit values, beliefs, and the assumptions that
employees infer guide behavior, and they base these inferences on the stories, myths, and
socialization experiences they have and the behaviors they observe (especially on the part of
leaders) that prove to be useful and promote success.
> Culture is intangible
Culture = qualitative research (ethnography, focus-groups, interviews)
Climate = quantitative research (survey)
Advantage climate: it is kind of clear.
Disadvantage climate: you choose dimensions in advance. You don’t do the qualitative
work you need to do to actually understand an organization.
Assignment 1. Organizational culture
1. What are the three Levels of (organizational) Culture as proposed by Schein?
How do they relate to each other?
The level of artifacts deals with what one feels, observes, and notes with all of one’s
senses as one enters a new culture. But as clear and palpable those cues are, they are difficult
to decipher unless one asks insiders what they mean. In short: visible organizational structures
and processes (hard to decipher).
When we get explanations we usually elicit what Schein calls the level of values,
usually the espoused goals, ideals, norms, standards, moral principles, and other untestable
premises. This is the level that is often tapped when we construct questionnaire surveys of
culture. In short: strategies, goals, and philosophies (espoused justifications).
It is only if we dig beneath the surface of values by observing behavior carefully,
noting anomalies, inconsistencies, or phenomena that remain unexplained that we elicit from
the insiders their underlying assumptions. In short: unconscious, taken for granted beliefs,
habits of perception, thought and feeling (ultimate source of values and action).
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