Suddenly Virtual

CHAPTER 11Building Organizational Culture Through Virtual Meetings: The Converged Perspective

Have you ever heard, “Well, that's how we do it around here,” or “Oh, let me show you how we do it,” or “People here kind of think this way about things”? If so, then you've experienced organizational culture.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, organizational culture is defined as the shared values and beliefs framed by organizational leaders. These values and beliefs are communicated and maintained through a variety of methods that ultimately direct employee behaviors, perceptions, and understanding of their work environment and the world in which the organization operates (SHRM 2020).

Every organization has an organizational culture that enables and constrains employee behavior. Most of the time, as employees are on‐boarded, they are socialized to see things a certain way, behave a certain way, and do things a certain way (Ostroff, Kinicki, and Muhammad 2012). Organizational culture manifests in many ways, from the types of equipment and software that are used to even the choice of beverage offered in the corporate cafeteria. That's why we laugh at the commercials where a Coca‐Cola delivery man drinks a Pepsi. If you're a Coke employee, any desire to drink Pepsi is socialized out of you – and should you swig a Pepsi now and then, you do so privately.

All of this is to say that just as organizations have their own “way of doing things,” organizations also have ...