The culture of an organization is significant to its members. Organizational culture, also known as corporate culture, is a "system of shared actions, values, and beliefs that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members" (Schermerhorn, Hunt and Osborn, 2008, p. 2). Organizational culture primarily serves two chief functions: external adaptation and internal integration (Schermerhorn et al. 2009). Many definitions of organizational culture refer to these two roles or purposes of corporate culture. Edgar Schein (2005) defines organization culture as "a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learns as it solves its problems of external adaptation and internal integration" (p. 1). The main goal of developing a corporate culture is to create a culture whose values and other elements are aligned with organizational goals.
In today's increasing diverse global marketplace and workforce, diversity is extremely important to organizational culture. Organizational cultures that fail to embrace diversity in order to leverage its benefits often fail to achieve goals. Workforce diversity pertains to the "presence of individual differences based on gender, race and ethnicity, age, able-bodiedness, and sexual orientation" (Schermerhorn et al. 2008, p. 8). However, in order to create a unified corporate culture, the values and agenda of sub-cultures or diverse groups in the organization must be incorporated into the organizational culture. This is known as a multicultural organization, a "firm that values diversity but systematically works to block the transfer of societally based subcultures into the fabric of the organization" (Schermerhorn et al. 2008, p. 5). Effective two-way communication between leaders and followers is essential to the development of a strong organizational culture.
With respect to organizational culture, communication of the values and behaviors of ...