Organisational Culture

Abstract This chapter examines the ways in which the concept of organisational culture has been theorised over time, with a view to exploring the importance of organisational culture in any social evaluation or change process. Younger highlights in the opening chapter of this Handbook that social evaluations are perceptions and judgements formulated by different audiences about social actors, including organisations. Judgements are constantly being made by people about the quality and purpose of the organisational culture of which they are a part. Divita and Case (2016) argue that organisational culture can be likened to ‘the smell of a place’ and that culture fundamentally shapes the perception of the organisation’s character and its capability. There is considerable evidence that a culture fundamentally impacts the organisation’s performance at many levels, yet we argue that many leaders are not as curious as they should be about the influence of organisational culture on their work, nor fully appreciate the role of social evaluation in both shaping and changing culture.