Communication and Organizational Culture: A Key to Understanding Work Experiences

Praise for Communication and Organizational Culture:

"At last, a book for the scholar, practitioner, and layperson alike that explains the ubiquitous experience of culture in organizational life has arrived. Keyton′s writing is clear and concise and accessible to those who may not come to it with a broad knowledge of the communication field, but have an interest in the power of culture and communication in organizational life."
― COMMUNICATION RESEARCH TRENDS

"This text demonstrates aspects of organizational culture through real- world examples from the field, marrying the scholarly and the practitioner perspectives by illustrating various concepts with examples from a wide range of organizations and institutions. It repeatedly stresses the importance and role of communication in creating and maintaining organizational culture."
―Sue Easton, Rollins College

"This engaging and scholarly text demonstrates a commitment to enabling students to practice communicatively grounded cultural analyses and cultural change projects.
― Angela Trethewey, Arizona State University

Organizations are the building blocks of our society. Whether it is a company, school, church, or government institution, each type of organization contributes to our collective economic, civic, community, and social lives in some fundamental way-and each organizations has its own unique culture.

Communication and Organizational Culture: A Key to Understanding Work Experiences is the first book to provide an introduction to different views on and approaches to the study of organizational culture from a communication perspective. This text introduces the basic elements of organizational culture including artifacts that emerge from the interactions of organizational members.

Author Joann Keyton uses a variety of lenses for understanding organizational culture and integrates research findings as practical advice about managing, developing, and changing organizational culture. Throughout, the book focuses on the communication practices and processes associated with organizational culture by drawing heavily on organizational culture research conducted by communication scholars and by illuminating the communicative aspects of organizational culture research conducted by scholars in peripheral disciplines.

Key Features

• Provides a "Cultural Toolkit" at the end of the book that offers seven analytical techniques for conducting organizational culture analyses
• Offers a unique multiple perspectives approach to help students gain a greater understanding of organizational culture, which will ultimately benefit them when they enter the workplace
• Provides students useful, pragmatic, and critical tools not found in other organizational culture texts

Written in a clear, concise manner accessible for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Organizational Communication, this text helps students read organizational culture, make sense of the culture, and make informed work and employment decisions. Communication and Organizational Culture is also an excellent textbook for many courses in Business and Management, Psychology, and Sociology.

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Joann Keyton (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 1987) is Professor of Communication at North Carolina State University. Specializing in group and organizational communication, her current research interests are relationship issues and interdisciplinary collaboration in organizational teams, the communication processes that constitute work, organizational culture, and sexual harassment. Her research has been published in Business Communication Quarterly, Communication Theory, Group Dynamics, Human Factors, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies Management Communication Quarterly, Small Group Research, Southern Journal of Communication, Western Journal of Communication, and Communication Yearbook and numerous edited collections. She has published texts on group communication (Oxford) and research methods (McGraw-Hill), as well as an organizational communication case book (with Pam Shockley-Zalabak; Oxford). Professor Keyton has served on the editorial boards of Communication Monographs, Communication Studies, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Small Group Research, and Southern Communication Journal. She served as editor of the Journal of Applied Communication Research, volumes 31–33; and was the founding editor of Communication Currents, volumes 1-5. She currently serves as editor of Small Group Research.