Instituting Cultural Change at a Major Organization

Abstract

This article examines the development and implementation of a strategic cultural change program from a case study perspective. Initially, the article describes how the program was developed, including an explanation as to how a communication component was integrated into the program from inception. This integration helped reduce the anxiety that change programs traditionally initiate. Additionally, the article examines preliminary findings captured during the program's implementation. These findings provide generalized insights about ways communication, strategy, and cultural change programs interact. As such, the findings provide real-world support that communication facilitates organizational change.

Taking a Rhetorical Perspective on Emerging Communication Practice: Pedagogy as Theory-Building Scholarship

“…A fourth group of 12 articles (13.2%) focused primarily on specific contexts of increased interest to business communication scholars: after-hours communication (Kim & Chon, 2022), startups (Wolf et al, 2022), change management (Dulek, 2015), and distributed or virtual organizations (Aritz et al, 2018; Berg, 2012; Lockwood & Song, 2020; Newman et al, 2020; Smith et al, 2018; Viererbl et al, 2022). Three articles reviewed emerging practices across business organizations more generally (Coffelt & Smith, 2020; Cyphert et al, 2019; Waldeck et al, 2012).…”

“…While these authors did not make distinctions between new and continuing communication practices, the described situations provided useful insights. Dulek (2015), for instance, describes contrasting communication practices as one organization changed from controlled to open information sharing, a key element of complex systems. Two reviews of entry-level skill requirements emphasize the degree to which competence depends on socialization within the organization’s rhetorical norms (Coffelt & Smith, 2020; Cyphert et al, 2019) and a study of virtual team practices noted that the combination of tools and practices in context is critical (Newman et al, 2020).…”

Mentoring in Business and Professional Communication: Case Study of a Multiyear Dynamic

“…Case-study research by Ainsworth (2013) used surveys and interviews of students in a university's business school to determine the effectiveness of international business in the business curriculum at that school. In workplace research, Dulek (2015) used a case-study approach to study a cultural change program at a major international manufacturer's corporate offices. In writing studies as a whole, the approach has often been used in situations where the research questions are primarily rhetorical or communicative (see, e.g., Cushman, 2016;Walton, 2016).…”

Learning the Emotion Rules of Communicating Within a Law Office: An Intern Constructs a Professional Identity Through Emotion Management

“…Additionally, MacNealy (1999) indicated the prevalence and importance of case study research in the field of technical communication, since this type of research contributes information on the inner workings of workplace writing and communication. Three relevant examples within the field of business communication are Alvesson and Willmott’s (2002) “Identity Regulation as Organizational Control: Producing the Appropriate Individual”; Nguyen, Murphy, and Chang’s (2014) “The Construction of Social Identity in Newly Recruited Nuclear Engineering Staff: A Longitudinal Study”; and Dulek’s (2015) “Instituting Cultural Change at a Major Organization: A Case Study”; as my research indicates as well, the case study approach provides an opportunity to study a rich amount of information and its context that might be limited by quantitative analysis alone.…”