ABSTRACT
We discussed the concept of culture and its implications for communication in Chapter 3. But that was in terms of national culture and communicating across cultural boundaries. Can we also apply similar ideas if we treat an organization as a ‘site’ of culture? Although sociologists have used this sort of approach for many years, the notion of organizational culture did not become prominent in the management literature until the 1980s, possibly as a reaction to models of organizations which were seen as ‘over-rational’ or ‘over-mechanical’ (Albrow, 1997). Responding to this management literature, many large organizations have spent very large sums of money since the 1980s, both investigating and trying to improve their internal culture. Communication has been a central concern of all these initiatives.
