How can an organization transmit its culture to its employees?

Organizations transmit their culture to employees through various channels, including stories, language, material symbols, and rituals. Rituals are repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of the organization, clarifying which goals are most important and which people are essential. For example, company chants, annual award ceremonies, or regular all-hands meetings are ritualistic activities that help to unite employees under a shared cultural understanding and reinforce organizational norms and values.

A. Requiring memorization of a mission statement is a superficial exercise that does not ensure employees internalize or understand the culture.

B. Influencing employee backgrounds relates to selection and diversity management, which shapes culture, but is not a method of transmitting it to current employees.

C. Studying employee complaints is a diagnostic tool for assessing the current climate, not a mechanism for transmitting the desired culture.

1. Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2018). Organizational Behavior (18th ed.). Pearson. (Chapter 16, Section "How Employees Learn Culture," pp. 519-521, identifies stories, rituals, symbols, and language as primary transmission methods).

2. Trice, H. M., & Beyer, J. M. (1984). Studying organizational cultures through rites and ceremonials. The Academy of Management Review, 9(4), 653–669. https://doi.org/10.2307/258492 (This article provides a detailed analysis of how rituals and ceremonials function to communicate and reinforce organizational culture).

3. Daft, R. L. (2015). Organization Theory and Design (12th ed.). Cengage Learning. (Chapter 10 discusses how rites and ceremonies are used as formal mechanisms to transmit cultural values).