Diagnosis of communication context in companies

Abstract

Organizational culture is an important aspect of organizations. It is a set of cultural values that reflect these aspects and relationships between them. One of these aspects is communication in an organization that includes verbal and nonverbal behaviors. The cultural value describing the organization’s relationship in communication is the communication context. Contextuality level is not only a determinant of the way of communication, it is also the basis of all other behaviors. Hence, diagnosis and description of the communication context of companies constitutes an interesting research problem. The main objective of the paper is to present the results of research on the communication context describing the surveyed companies. 52 Polish companies and 951 respondents participated in the study. The diagnosis was based on a survey. The survey questionnaire contained questions regarding manifestations of cultural values which include the communication context. Research results indicate that the organizational culture of the surveyed companies is characterized by low contextuality. Dominating verbal codes in communication have translated into active, individual, impersonal, task-oriented behaviors of employees.