Elements of Organizational Culture
Deciphering Organizational Culture through Artifacts
Merging Organizational Cultures
ASA theory
Organizational Socialization
100

These are the values that corporate leaders hope will eventually become the organization’s culture.

What are espoused values?

100

This refers to the observable symbols and signs of an organization’s culture. 

What are artifacts?

100

This is a process of diagnosing cultural relations between companies and determining the extent to which cultural clashes will likely occur.

What is a bicultural audit?

100

This argues that organizations have a natural tendency to hire and retain people with values and personality characteristics consistent with the organization’s character.

What is Attraction–selection–attrition (ASA) theory?

100

This refers to the individual’s beliefs about terms/conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between person and another person through recruitment/socialization.

What is a psychological contract?

200

Values are this when they guide and influence decisions and behaviour.

What are enacted values?

200

These adds human realism to corporate expectations, individual performance standards, and the criteria for getting fired.

What are organizational stories and legends?

200

This occurs when the acquired company embraces acquiring firm’s culture.

What is Assimilation?

200

This refers to job applicants avoiding prospective employers whose values seem incompatible with their own values.

What is attraction?

200

These contracts are primarily short-term economic exchange, while these are long-term attachments that encompass mutual obligations.

What is transactional, relational?

300

Organizations differ in this, the relative ordering (prioritizing) of shared values.

What is their cultural content?

300

This refers to how employees talk to each other, describe customers, express anger, and greet stakeholders.

What is organizational language?

300

This occurs when the acquiring firm imposes its culture on the unwilling acquired firm.

What is Deculturation?

300

This refers to how well a person “fits” in with the company’s culture and decides which job applicants to hire.

What is selection?

300

This is a method of improving organizational socialization in which job applicants are given a balance of positive, negative information about the job/work context.

What is a realistic job preview?

400

These are values/assumptions shared most consistently and widely by the organization’s members.

What is the dominant culture?

400

These are programmed routines of daily organizational life that dramatize an organization’s culture?

What are rituals?

400

This occurs when merging companies combine the two or more cultures into a new composite culture.

What is Integration?

400

This refers to people that are motivated to leave environments that are a poor fit.

What is attrition?

400

These agents of socialization provide technical information, performance feedback, and information about job duties.

Who are supervisors?

500

These enhance the dominant culture by espousing parallel assumptions and values, while these embrace values or assumptions that directly oppose the dominant culture

What are subcultures, countercultures?

500

These are planned activities conducted specifically for the benefit of an audience.

What are ceremonies?

500

This occurs when merging companies remain distinct entities with minimal exchange of culture or organizational practices.

What is separation?

500

This involves learning the values, expected behaviours, and social knowledge necessary to assume their roles in the organization.

What is organizational socialization?

500

These agents of socialization are easily accessible, can answer questions when problems arise and serve as role models for appropriate behaviour.

Who are co-workers?