Organizational Discourses as Status Symbols
Organizational Discourses as Status Symbols

Summary/Abstract: Organizational culture represented as an iceberg (Schein 25) conveys a strong visual message on the visible and invisible layers of organizational values, interactions and rituals. On-stage and off-stage aspects of organizational life are intertwining and developing gradually both for the insider and for the outsider of a given social system. Organizational socialization is, in fact, the process of individual and group learning aimed at aligning to the values and practices of a given institutional setting (Van Maanen and Schein 3). The main vehicle of this learning process is language: acquiring key organizational discourses is a tool of socialization, of integration into the new social space. Once acquired, these language practices turn into routines and effective tools of status building (Cunliffe and Shotter 121). Discourses serve both as tools of integrating newcomers and as cultural markers of status. In order to explore the deep-seated levels of organizational culture, a wide range of convergent approaches is necessary: observation, interviews, questionnaires, and content analysis of organizational documents (Hofstede 5). We propose a framework of understanding an organization’s culture and socialization practices through exploring and analyzing leadership discourses.

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