Communication Perspectives on Organizational Culture and Organizational Identification

Communication has been shown to be of critical importance in creating organizational cultures as well as organizational identification (Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1982; Smits et al., 2000). Historically, though, both constructs, still suffer from a lack of agreement as to their meaning and the best methods of study (Tanriverdi et al., 2016). It appears that the decision as to what the concept means depends on the nature of the particular knowledge premises (paradigm) from which it is approached.

For example, Pettigrew (1979), who favored an interpretative approach, proposed that culture is something that an organization is (not another variable property that an organization has). Pettigrew proposed a methodology that is “more likely to be interested in language systems of becoming than of being, of processes of structural elaboration rather than the precise description of structural form [. . .]” (p. 570). His aim was to address the problem of how OCs are established, by focusing on symbols, language, ideology, belief, ritual, and myth. For narrative-interpretive scholars (most of whom favor a sociological paradigm of truth and reality as a, non-positivist, social construction) understanding OC is about “[. . .] symbol, ideational systems, myth and ritual [. . .]” (Meek, 1988, p. 453) or about “[. . .] the art of reading and understanding organizational life” (Morgan, 1997, p. 4). Similarly, from a narrative-interpretive perspective, Hatch (1993) proposed a model of “cultural dynamics” consisting of the symbolic processes of manifestation, realization, symbolization, and interpretation.

Likewise, organizational identification (OI)—the portion of someone’s self-identity derived from an organization they belong to—has long been studied by organizational, psychological, and communication researchers (Riketta, 2005). According to He and Brown (2013), considerable debate centers on how to differentiate OI from cognate terms such as corporate image and reputation (images projected to external audiences), construed external image (how insiders believe outsiders view the organization), and particularly organizational culture (Fombrun, 1996; Fombrun & Shanley, 1990; Gioia et al., 2002; Hatch & Schultz, 1997). To address these debates, a variety of approaches have been used.

Social constructionist perspectives, sometimes also referred to as interpretive or social cognition approaches, regard OI as the socially constructed product of relationships between collectively held and socially structured individual cognitions regarding “who the organization is” (Corley et al., 2006; Dutton et al., 1994). In most formulations, OI refers to relatively shared understandings concerning what is central, distinctive, and enduring about an organization, that give meaning to members’ experience of work, and which derive from a complex of interactions by multiple actors from across professional groups and hierarchical levels (Glynn, 2000; Harrison, 2000; Kjaergaard & Ravasi, 2011).

According to He and Brown, the largest body of nonmainstream research has theorized organizational identities as texts constituted through discourse, most usually narratives (Brown & Humphreys, 2006; Chreim, 2005; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1994; Humphreys & Brown, 2002). For Czarniawska-Joerges (1994, p. 198), organizations’ identities are constructed in continuing processes of narration “. . . where both the narrator and the audience formulate, edit, applaud, and refuse various elements of the ever-produced narrative.” Complementary to this, Brown (2006) has defined OI as the totality of identity-relevant narratives that participants author about them in their conversations, written histories, documents such as reports and web presences, and sought to refocus attention on issues of power, reflexivity, voice, plurivocity, temporality, and fictionality (Brown et al., 2005).

As these perspectives indicate, the topics of organizational culture and organizational identification are ripe for a more focused examination from a communication viewpoint. In this special issue, you will find six articles that address these issues to varying degrees.

As organization and management scholars increasingly embrace organizations as social constructions, communication is more commonly recognized as the practice that creates, maintains, and changes organization. However, scholarship attending to organizational culture and identification often relies on unsophisticated perspectives of communication without much concern for power and the politics of language use. In “Organizational Culture, Discipline, and the Politics of Self: Transformation through Responsive Conversation,” John McClellan reviews central ideas across four communicative perspectives for understanding and critiquing organization that complicate and reorient attention to organizational culture and identification. These perspectives direct attention toward meaning-making practices and social performances; the socio-historical qualities of meaning and conflict suppression; tension-filled components of organization and the embodiment of meaning; as well as self-discipline and strategized self-subordination. Embracing the complexities offered in these communicative orientations, McClellan invite scholars and practitioners to attend to responsive conversations about everyday experiences of organizational life to generate more mutually satisfying organizational cultures that celebrate diverse subjectivities at work.

As one of the first empirical attempts investigating the emerging role of positive emotional culture within organizations, Cen “April” Yue, Rita Linjuan Men, and Mary Ann Ferguson examine how a symmetrical internal communication system and leaders’ use of motivating language contribute to fostering a positive emotional culture featured by joy, companionate love, pride, and gratitude. Using a quantitative online survey of 482-full-time employees in the U.S., the study, entitled “Examining the Effects of Internal Communication and Emotional Culture on Employees’ Organizational Identification,” further examines the linkage between a positive emotional culture and employees’ organizational identification.

In “Going to Lunch”: The Role of Catch Phrases and Language in Constructing a Heteronormative Leadership Culture,” Nancy Curtin and Kimberly Mungaray examine raw focus group data from a previous case study that demonstrated the existence of a heteronormative leadership paradigm. This paradigm is personified in the heteronormative ideal leader, who is strong, agentic, charismatic and typically white and male. The current study corroborates the findings from the previous case study, which contributes to even more profound meaning for the current study’s conclusions. For this study, Mungaray independently analyzed the data using a methodology that combines elements of discourse analysis and conversation analysis to identify what organizational cultural and identity messages are communicated by focus group participants.

In “Leader Communication and Follower Identity: How Leader Motivating Language Shapes Organizational Identification Through Cultural Knowledge and Fit,” Milton Mayfield and Jacqueline Mayfield look at the links between leader communication (as conceptualized through motivating language) and follower organizational identification as mediated by follower cultural knowledge and fit. Model testing occurred with subjects from the USA and India with the model fitting equally well in both nations.

In “Co-Creating Organizational Culture and Influencing Organizational Identifica-tion: Examining a Transgender Nonprofit Organization Communicating Family and Home,” Elizabeth K. Eger theorizes how communication creates participants’ organizational identification with nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and their co-construction of organizational identities. Findings from a three-year organizational ethnography of an NPO serving transgender people, the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico (TGRC), showcase how directors, staff, and “guests” (those being served by the NPO served) co-constructed a “family” organizational identity and their subsequent identification through communication.

Immigrant women comprise one of the fastest growing groups of business owners in the U.S. and other urban economies; however, a greater proportion of immigrant women business owners shut down their business within a year compared to their non-immigrant peers. In an attempt to address this challenge, Mugi Haseki explores the communication strategies adopted by immigrant women entrepreneurs as they manage key identities (gender, ethnicity, religion, and immigrant status) that may influence their success. Drawing on a structurational model of multiple identities and linking that with intersectionality research, the final study that appears in this issue, entitled “Communicatively Managing Multiple, Intersecting Identities among Immigrant Women Entrepreneurs,” examines the experiences of 60 immigrant women entrepreneurs from 30 different countries in New York City as they (dis)connect with their various identities.