The title of the book was ôOrganizational Communicationö and I was still attempting to find something that would help me learn how to become a better communicator within an organization. Yet this chapter, while no doubt interesting, seemed to be a blatant admission that defining a culture of a company was an almost impossible task.
This conclusion became more obvious while observing the class reaction to the chapter. It was clear that I was not the only one who felt that the presentation was patently absurd, and presented in a most non-lucid style. As a matter of fact, it was hard to accept the fact that the same authors who had written so clearly about GST could be responsible for this chapter. Consider this explanation of culture.
The term culture is a symbol. It represents the actions, practices, stories (monologues and dialogues), and artifacts that characterize a culture. Similarly, we study the culture of an organization through its symbolic environment (e.g. its organized activities represent the search for meaningful orders) as well as through its uses of symbols ( i.e. its actions, practices, stories, and artifacts). The study of organizational cultures thereby involves interpreting the meaning of these symbolic constructionsö(Eisenberg & Goodall, 1997, 125).
And yet it is undeniable that a companyÆs culture is an integral key to how the company can be managed. Why, then, did the authors choose to keep clouding the subject with more and more elusive examples. The most absurd was the example quoted on page 132 which I call the Spider Man example.
It looks like a three dimensional spiderÆs web
The beauty of the thing is how it changes,
To meet the total needs of the user (p. 132).
The fact that Goodall quotes himself with this passage, referring to an earlier work of his, is also irritating. I presume that this imagery was essential to the authors to
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