web posters--organizing and culture 2

In addition to the web posters I discussed yesterday, several others focused on organizational culture. Similar to Hapa, Violet's research focused on organizational culture and change. She identified the different aspects of culture that must be managed when attempting to change an organization's culture. Still, the research suggests that culture is not as easily managed as top executives might like to think.

Charlemagne focused on a specific group of people, front-line employees, and their role in organizational culture and the organization's performance. Classic research highlights the importance of front-line employees in presenting the public face of the organization and performing key aspects of the organization's culture. Current research emphasizes the importance of the organization's culture on front-line employee performance and the link to customer satisfaction. That is, front-line employees provide the conduit for organizational culture from the organization to those outside it.

Although CommBuzz doesn't directly address organizational culture, there's no doubt that culture plays a role in organizational identity. CommBuzz used the metaphor of a tree to present research on organizational identity grounded in social identity theory and structuration theory. Interestingly, CommBuzz found that research in this area focused primarily on lower-level employees and the degree to which they bought into the vision top management presents. What's neglected, however, is the contribution lower-level employees make to the development, maintenance, and change of organizational identity. So as with Charlemagne, CommBuzz is interested in how those outside of management participate in the creation of organizational life and sensemaking.

~ Professor Cyborg