Communication and Organizational Culture: A Key to Understanding Work Experiences

`This engaging and scholarly text demonstrates a commitment to enabling students to practice communicatively grounded cultural analyses and cultural change projects′ - Angela Trethewey, Arizona State University

Communication and Organizational Culture provides an introduction to different views on and approaches to the study of organizational culture from a communication perspective. This text introduces the basic elements of organizational culture including artifacts that emerge from the interactions of organizational members.

The author uses a variety of lenses for understanding organizational culture and integrates research findings as practical advice about managing, developing, and changing organizational culture. Throughout, the book focuses on the communication practices and processes associated with organizational culture by drawing heavily on organizational culture research conducted by communication scholars and by illuminating the communicative aspects of organizational culture research conducted by scholars in peripheral disciplines.

Key Features

- Provides a `Cultural Toolkit′ at the end of the book that offers seven analytical techniques for conducting organizational culture analyses

- Offers a unique multiple perspectives approach to help students gain a greater understanding of organizational culture, which will ultimately benefit them when they enter the workplace

- Provides students useful, pragmatic, and critical tools not found in other organizational culture texts

Written in a clear, concise manner accessible for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Organizational Communication, this text helps students read organizational culture, make sense of the culture, and make informed work and employment decisions. Communication and Organizational Culture is also an excellent textbook for many courses in Business and Management, Psychology, and Sociology.

Joann Keyton (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 1987) is Professor of Communication at North Carolina State University. Specializing in group and organizational communication, her current research interests are relationship issues and interdisciplinary collaboration in organizational teams, the communication processes that constitute work, organizational culture, and sexual harassment. Her research has been published in Business Communication Quarterly, Communication Theory, Group Dynamics, Human Factors, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies Management Communication Quarterly, Small Group Research, Southern Journal of Communication, Western Journal of Communication, and Communication Yearbook and numerous edited collections. She has published texts on group communication (Oxford) and research methods (McGraw-Hill), as well as an organizational communication case book (with Pam Shockley-Zalabak; Oxford). Professor Keyton has served on the editorial boards of Communication Monographs, Communication Studies, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Small Group Research, and Southern Communication Journal. She served as editor of the Journal of Applied Communication Research, volumes 31–33; and was the founding editor of Communication Currents, volumes 1-5. She currently serves as editor of Small Group Research.