Processing culture : an ethnographic study on culture, media and participation in a corporate setting
(2016) MKVM13 20161Media and Communication Studies
- Abstract
- Corporate or organizational culture is a popular topic among organizational scholars, but with the use of metaphors bridges to media and communication studies can be made. By comparing an organization with a democracy through the help of metaphors, Peter Dahlgren’s (2009) theoretical framework on civic culture can be applied and tested to explore the culture inside a private organization. In an organization employees are important cultural producers, it is their interactions, perceptions and participation among other things that create and shape the corporate culture. While in civic culture media has more of a significant cultural role. The aim of this thesis is therefore to understand and explain how employees as cultural producers shape... (More)
- Corporate or organizational culture is a popular topic among organizational scholars, but with the use of metaphors bridges to media and communication studies can be made. By comparing an organization with a democracy through the help of metaphors, Peter Dahlgren’s (2009) theoretical framework on civic culture can be applied and tested to explore the culture inside a private organization. In an organization employees are important cultural producers, it is their interactions, perceptions and participation among other things that create and shape the corporate culture. While in civic culture media has more of a significant cultural role. The aim of this thesis is therefore to understand and explain how employees as cultural producers shape maintain and participate in the culture in a private organization. Secondly the aim is also to research the internal media and its impact on corporate culture and participation.
To achieve the aim I have done interviews with employees at a private organization additionally I did unstructured observations to get to the physical, the artifacts and other symbols that mediate the culture. The result of my empirical material, analyzed together with Dahlgren’s six dimensions of civic culture, illustrate that the comparison with a democracy is relevant. The culture is democratic in several ways; employees felt safe to speak their mind, its consensus driven and it offers spaces for communication, interaction and participation. However corporate culture is also contradictory; it is a difficult culture to integrate into, there is a lack of time and space to interact and participate in informal communication and a decreasing of corporate generosity that creates displeasure among employees. The untraditional internal media such as symbols, artefacts, meetings and spaces are important cultural beares and the latter two provides oppertunities for interaction and participation. Digital corporate media does not however have such an important cultural impact and there is potential for more employees to participate . (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8888108
- author
- Persson, Emilia LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20161
- year
- 2016
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Corporate culture, organization, civic culture, participation, employees, media
- language
- English
- id
- 8888108
- date added to LUP
- 2016-11-18 07:52:24
- date last changed
- 2016-11-18 07:52:24
@misc{8888108,
abstract = {{Corporate or organizational culture is a popular topic among organizational scholars, but with the use of metaphors bridges to media and communication studies can be made. By comparing an organization with a democracy through the help of metaphors, Peter Dahlgren’s (2009) theoretical framework on civic culture can be applied and tested to explore the culture inside a private organization. In an organization employees are important cultural producers, it is their interactions, perceptions and participation among other things that create and shape the corporate culture. While in civic culture media has more of a significant cultural role. The aim of this thesis is therefore to understand and explain how employees as cultural producers shape maintain and participate in the culture in a private organization. Secondly the aim is also to research the internal media and its impact on corporate culture and participation.
To achieve the aim I have done interviews with employees at a private organization additionally I did unstructured observations to get to the physical, the artifacts and other symbols that mediate the culture. The result of my empirical material, analyzed together with Dahlgren’s six dimensions of civic culture, illustrate that the comparison with a democracy is relevant. The culture is democratic in several ways; employees felt safe to speak their mind, its consensus driven and it offers spaces for communication, interaction and participation. However corporate culture is also contradictory; it is a difficult culture to integrate into, there is a lack of time and space to interact and participate in informal communication and a decreasing of corporate generosity that creates displeasure among employees. The untraditional internal media such as symbols, artefacts, meetings and spaces are important cultural beares and the latter two provides oppertunities for interaction and participation. Digital corporate media does not however have such an important cultural impact and there is potential for more employees to participate .}},
author = {{Persson, Emilia}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Processing culture : an ethnographic study on culture, media and participation in a corporate setting}},
year = {{2016}},
}