Shaping Organizational Culture

Corporate culture is derived from the top-down and consists of the expectations of the behavior that employees should exhibit. The text provides three models for examining the dimensions of culture in an organization: Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory, Schein's Cognitive Levels of Organizational Culture, and Gerry Johnson's Cultural Web. Each model provides a different perspective on organizational culture but gives a holistic picture of all the dimensions.

Communicating Organizational Culture

Management is tasked with both creating culture and accurately communicating it across the organization.

Learning Objectives

Recognize the role of management in communicating and teaching organizational culture to employees and subordinates.

Key Takeaways

Key Points
  • Corporate culture is used to control, coordinate, and integrate company subsidiaries.
  • The role of the manager is essential to the successful communication of a given organizational culture because managers are figureheads and role models for how individuals in the organization should behave.
  • Organizations should strive for what is considered a "healthy" organizational culture to increase productivity, growth, efficiency, and to reduce counterproductive behavior and turnover of employees.

Key Terms
  • organization: A group of people or other legal entities with an explicit purpose and written rules.


Corporate culture is used to control, coordinate, and integrate company subsidiaries. Culture runs deeper than this definition, however, because culture also represents the embedded values, traditions, beliefs, and behaviors of a given group. Culture is indicative not only of what individuals pursue and believe in, but also their behaviors, assumptions, and communications. As a result, culture is both complex to create and challenging to communicate and imbue within the organization.