1. What do you consider the organization’s culture to be? Either use your own words to describe this or relate your understanding of the culture to one of the models we have covered in this chapter, e.g. Harrison, Deal and Kennedy. 

2. Does this culture apply equally across the whole of the organization or just to a certain part(s) of it? You will initially need to think through these ideas on your own. Make some brief notes to help organize your thoughts. Having done this, exchange your ideas with others in a group. 

The purpose of this activity is to help students to focus their understanding of the broad concept of organisational culture and relate it to an organisation of which they have some knowledge. The two key issues this activity attempts to focus on are conceptual models of culture and the concept of subcultures. Teachers could get students to describe the organization they have knowledge of and relate it to one of the numerous models or typologies of culture that have been produced in the literature. If students are not familiar with these models as yet, or seem unable to make the link between their knowledge of an organization and conceptual models, teaching staff could ‘translate’ the student’s ideas, for example, by identifying some typical characteristics of the organization, and relate these to specific models. Students could be encouraged to identify management practices and other cultural mechanisms, for example, symbols and stories that are being used by management in the organization. In relation to subcultures, students should be encouraged to identify what the different subcultures are. Again, they should be encouraged to identify why these subcultures exist in the same organization, and how this was perceived within the organization, for example, positively or was it considered a problem. Students should also be encouraged to try and identify why these subcultures occurred, for example, based on different professions or different functional areas of the organization.