| Cultural approaches to understanding organizational experience have recently generated interest as both theorical and application research. Organizational culture has been addressed as something an organization HAS or IS. The difference has definitional, purposive, and methodological implications. This study proceeds from the latter assumption and was conducted as interpretive inquiry. Its data are insider interpretations of their organizational experience--the values, beliefs, and meanings they share and which are reflected in patterned communicative behaviors. The study framework synthesizes anthropologists' interest in cultural "rules" of behavior, the interdisciplinary advocacy of organizations and cultures as communication phenomena, and communication theory's communication rules perspective, which posits that intentional communication is accomplished by consensus on coordinating rules that prescribe preferred interaction behavior.;The study took place in two interfacing groups of a large business corporation. The research method was multi-faceted and included the researcher "living in" with each group for a four-week period. During this period, the researcher inferred informal influence rules from behavioral data gathered during observation and interviews, and formal rules by examining numerous official documents. The inferred rules were developed into the Workplace Rules Questionnaire. Group members responded to each questionnaire rule statement on two dimensions: experience and ethics. Analyses of the responses yielded a rule-based Cultural Description for each group. Three other Culture Descriptions were developed: one in accordance with the formal rules, two in accordance with each groups' responses to a standardized influence assessment instrument, the Influence Style Questionnaire. Group members assessed the five descriptions according to how fully and accurately each captured their group-culture. By several measures, the communication rules-based description was preferred by each group. The research demonstrates the descriptive, evaluative, and theoretical usefulness of addressing organizations as communication/culture phenomena enacted through shared communication rules.;The specific study purpose is to determine the efficacy of describing organizations-as-cultures by identifying the operative communication rules that shape interactions in a pervasive area of organizational life: power-politics-influence. |
