This case examines the issue of organizational socialization, as a new employee struggles to recognize and adapt to the norms of a strong corporate culture. Dante is a newcomer to Bedrock Communication (BC), a successful public relations firm. Bedrock’s corporate culture includes a team orientation to all aspects of work. Dante’s confidence is appreciated, but his age and lack of organizational experience make his transition complicated. His behavior at the company Christmas party is an indication that he does not understand the subtleties of BC’s culture.

This case study illustrates the challenge of organizational socialization. In other words, how does a new employee maintain his or her individuality, while adapting to the expectations of the organization and its culture?

This case study allows students to recognize the impact of a strong corporate culture, including the formal and informal clues that are communicated during the socialization process.

Corporate culture—a managerial view that culture is something that an organization possesses, manages, and exploits to enhance productivity.

Normative control—an expectation held by management that they can regulate employee behaviors by influencing their thoughts and feelings. It is achieved when management elicits compliance through rules, social, and moral pressures that influence employees to conform to norms and values imparted though socialization and reinforced through interpersonal relationships.

Organizational culture—the sum total of ways of living, organizing, and communicating, structured in a group of individuals and transmitted to newcomers by means of verbal and nonverbal communication.

Organizational humor—joking and humorous interactions that poke fun at company policies, management, or employees.

Organizational norms—the unwritten rules of organizational behavior.

Organizational rites—planned organizational events that are collectively produced and structured, such as holiday parties, corporate retreats, and company awards banquets, intended to create a "frame" or a shared definition of reality for the organization.

Organizational rituals—the habitual zed communication and behaviors of organizational members that serve to deepen an organization’s culture (e.g., identifying employees as team members and team leads, taking a break at the same time every day, or patterned banter between employees).

Organizational socialization—an ongoing process involving organizational members constructing and maintaining their relationship with the organization. It has been framed as the period of time where the individual-organizational relationship is manifested, while management attempts to communicate rules, shared values, practices, and norms of the organization.

Organizational stories—an engaging form of organizational communication that emotionally involves both teller and listener, provoking attention, interest, and absorption; storytelling functions in the organization to reduce uncertainty, socialize new members, manage meaning, and provide bonding and identification.

Sense making—attempting to understand an event by placing the stimuli into some kind of framework in order to comprehend, understand, explain, attribute, extrapolate, and predict; the act of making sense of a new situation.

Teams—a group that attempts to work together toward a common goal, including attention to maintenance behaviors. Effective teams use the different skills of team members to their advantage when attempting to achieve their goal.

1. What do you both like and dislike about Dante? Would you like to work with him? Would you like to socialize with him?

2. Do you agree or disagree with Dante’s choice to perform at the Christmas party? Was Dante a victim in this case study? Why or why not?

3. In your opinion, what events) triggered the perceived change in Dante’s co-workers?

4. What did you like and dislike about Bedrock’s culture?

5. In your opinion, what was Edwardo’s role in the socialization of Dante?

6. How did management prepare Dante for his socialization at Bedrock? Did they do enough?

7. What subtle and not-so-subtle messages were communicated by both Dante and Emmett during Dante’s review?

8. What decisions made by Dante are likely to be similar to the decisions you will make in your first position?

9. What happens over the next three months of Dante’s life? If he stays, what would need to change and how? If he leaves, how would he frame his time at BC to get another position? How does he sense make?

10. Tell us about your experiences with work and social time; how do work and social norms influence the culture of your workplace? May be positive and/or negative.

11. As students thinking about your first position, what have you learned from this case study regarding organizational norms?

5. Culture and/or corporate culture can be understood by watching a movie that displays

film. Part of the assignment could include a creative presentation that synthesizes class material, the

case study, and research.

Newcomers to an organization naturally go through a period of adjustment, during which they become acclimated to their new position. This process is known as organizational socialization. Organizational socialization has been framed as the period of time, during which the individual organizational relationship is manifested (Barge & Schlueter, 2004). Organizational socialization is an attempt by management to communicate the rules, shared values, practices, and norms of an organization to newcomers. It is important for new organizational members (Jablin 1984, 1987). Three types of socialization practices have been identified as impacting newcomers, including= organizational rites and rituals, narratives and stories, and humor and jokes (Brown 1985, Deal and Kennedy, 1999, Meyer, 1995, 1997).

The process of receiving and interpreting messages is known as sense making (Weick, 1995). An organizational newcomer attempts to sense make their experiences by placing stimuli into some kind of framework in order "to comprehend, understand, explain, attribute, extrapolate, and predict" (Starbuck & Milliken, 1988, p. 51). As individuals enter into a new organization, sense making is an important part of their attempts to determine whether they feel comfortable with or fit into the organization’s culture. Newcomers attempt to understand several aspects of their organizational life—task, role, surroundings, and fellow employees. By sense making an organization’s culture, newcomers begin a co-constitutional process of organizational membership.

Through its culture, an organization influences and shapes the newcomer; yet, through interaction with organizational members, the newcomer also influences and shapes the organization’s culture (Jablin, 1982, 1984, 1987).

Newcomers sense make socialization practices for a variety of purposes, including clarifying expectations, acquiring new values, modifying old values, and learning the behaviors necessary for assuming an organizational role (Louis, 1980, Van Maanen, 1976, Van Maanen & Schein, 1979).Organizations use institutional socialization practices in an attempt to facilitate a newcomer’s sense making of an organization and its culture, promoting "attachment to the job and organization, thus promoting a more loyal workforce" (Ashford & Saks, 1996, p. 170).

Individuals purposefully construct appropriate organizational realities, because their self concept is affected by the organization and their role in it. According to Dutton and Dukerich (1991), accepting membership into an organized group means that you are a representative of that group; therefore, newcomers inherently desire to demonstrate their membership to the organization through appropriate thoughts and behaviors. Dickmeyer’s (2001) research on sense making in the organization found that when newcomers share the values of the organization, they purposefully behave in ways that demonstrate an agreement with the organization’s culture. Such acts indicate that newcomers have been successfully socialized.

Socialization is clearly influenced by the organization’s culture (Barge & Schleuter, 2004). Corporate culture has been defined as the social or normative glue that holds an organization together (Tichy, 1983). It is also understood as a set of assumptions, often unstated, that members share (Sathe, 1985). Organizational culture is conveyed to organizational members formally (e.g., through orientation, training seminars, organizational rites and rituals, etc.) or informally (e.g., through storytelling, artifacts, everyday conversations). The corporate culture approach to managing is normative in nature (Barley & Kunda, 1992) which means that management attempts to control its workers by winning their hearts and minds.

Normative control elicits compliance of employees through social and moral pressures to conform to norms and values imparted though socialization and reinforced through interpersonal relationships (Evans, Kunda, & Barley, forthcoming). Normative control acts focus on communicating appropriate behaviors, thoughts, and emotions to employees by means intended to win their hearts and minds (Barley & Kunda, 1992). By winning the hearts and minds of workers, managers can achieve the subtlest of all forms of control: moral authority.

In sum, managers attempt to socialize employees (especially newcomers) in order to gain normative control over their members through well-crafted corporate-culture messages intended to enhance organizational newcomers’ perceptions of their culture. Newcomers are open to these

forms of communication, because they attempt to understand their lives and actions in context o the organization that they see themselves representing.

1. What evidence do we have that reveals Bedrock’s strong corporate culture?

2. Provide examples of explicit and implicit messages about "the way things are done around here."

3. Identify the tensions that Dante likely experiences in his position at Bedrock.

4. What organizational norms, if any, did Dante violate at Bedrock? What effect did these violations have?

5. Pretend you are in charge of new employee orientation at Bedrock Communication. What would you do to ensure that newcomers are prepared for Bedrock’s culture?

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