Articulating Organisational Culture

Scholarly literature suggests that organisational culture is a significant force withinan organisation. The ability to interpret an organisation’s culture would therefore beuseful. This report develops and demonstrates a research methodology toinvestigate the culture of the organisation. The methodology is based on theontological assumption of the corporation being a ‘Work’, the kind of entity that setsup a ‘World’ for people as developed from the hermeneutic phenomenologicaltradition. A ‘World’ in this sense is the collection of interpretations within whichhuman beings make sense of their existence.Building on existing approaches that are based on an understanding oforganisational cultures similar to a ‘World’ in the hermeneutic phenomenologicalsense, the report develops a qualitative methodology that consists of a series ofquestions posed to members of the organisation to articulate the fundamentalassumptions and interpretations of the culture of a specific company.The report proceeds to show the insights obtained in applying this type of researchto understanding the ‘World’ or culture of a South African utility company. The keyfindings of the report established that the proposed method was able to give a richin-depth insight into the ‘World’ and culture of the company in a way that proves tobe a useful and valuable method to interpret organisational culture which can beused to inform management decisions.