What Is the Relationship between Organizational Culture and Communication?

The relationship between organizational culture and communication lies in the fact that a good network of communication within an organization helps create a strong corporate structure. The culture of an organization is the description of how such a company handles its internal and external affairs. It defines the essence of a company and gives an indication of the driving force behind the attainment of the company's goals. An example of an organizational culture is the policy of a company regarding lunch breaks. If a company allows its employees to have a 30-minute lunch break, it may allow a grace period of an extra five minutes for them to report back to duty. Any employee who stays beyond 35 minutes may face sanctions.

This requirement might be something the company takes very seriously because it is a part of their organizational culture. In order to impress the seriousness of this requirement on its employees, the company has to communicate with them. The method of communication is what determines if the company has a good organizational culture and communication network. Some companies have a centralized method of communication within their organization. In this type of method, communication flows from one centralized point to the rest of the organization. If it is a small company, a supervisor might be the source of communication with the employees. In bigger organizations, the information might flow from a human resources department to other parts of the organization through methods like memos, meetings and other forms of internal information dissemination.

Some big companies may have several subsidiaries with their own respective human resources departments. These departments may either be independent, or they may take their instructions from the human resources department located in the head office. As such, the information flows down from the head office to the human resource departments in other arms of the company, to the managers of different departments, and on to the employees. It may also work in a reverse fashion; the information may flow from the various human resource departments in the different subsidiaries to someone in the headquarters. The human resource department in the headquarters will gather all of the information and study it to find out if the different subsidiaries are conforming to the organizations corporate culture and working toward achieving its goals.

Organizational culture and communication also determines how a company relates with other entities that are external to the organization. For instance, it helps a company formulate policies regarding customer service, and the manner in which employees relate to the competition. Almost all organizations have a policy of strong customer service. The way the employees implement this stipulation is the result of effective communication with the employees by the company, or the lack of communication.