The organisational culture can be defined in one short enough to be a Tweet - it is a social construct made up of the values, the relationship patterns, and the ways of doing things in an organisation. Culture can also be said to have material or visible artifacts. For instance, hanging pictures on the walls in the reception area of a corporate head office is an artifact signalling to visitors and employees that they are entering a visually stimulating corporate work environment (Harding, 2003). Other examples of 'artifacts' are the stethoscope worn by doctors in hospitals, the wig worn by judges in British law courts, and the professorial gown in American universities. Artifacts can be good or bad signals, and they can also be pretty much anything but a direct contradiction of the signal itself is an artifact too. Writing (or speaking) is another huge area for signal artifacts.

Stories about an organisation’s history, values, and ways of doing things are also related. Interpersonal storytelling can facilitate sense-making and sense-giving in organisations, providing a basis for developing shared meanings and understandings of an experience. Garud et al. (2011) and Weick (1995) have made this point. Jabri (2017) takes it further by saying that narrative and storytelling are indispensable for constructing organisational change. In this construction, he says, the components of what makes a good story are first necessary to know. To illustrate this further, Myers (2021) does not just say what the good components are; he also explains how many (and sometimes in reverse order) of those components constitute a bad story.

Modelling culture: Iceberg and Web

Mainstream thought holds that it's possible for an organization to construct a culture that is both highly committed and united, and which fosters productivity and profitability (Martin, 2002, as cited in Alvesson, 2016: 267). Researchers have sought to understand and (somewhat) tame the slippery concept of organisational culture by building models that capture its general characteristics. The two best-known models are the 'cultural iceberg' and the 'cultural web.' Using these models, it's suggested, allows leaders to illuminate the (too often secreted away) assumptions, practices, and values that constitute the seemingly effortless 'magic' of highly productive, highly profitable (and highly imitable!) organisations.

The American cross-cultural researcher and anthropologist Hall (1976) put forth the conception that culture has many elements that can be thought of as an iceberg. Organisational culture scholars have adopted this model to examine organisational culture (Schien, 2017). The Iceberg Model identifies three layers of culture. They are as follows: [1] The surface layer consists of observable artifacts and practices. These are easy to research and are viewed metaphorically as the 'tip of an iceberg.' [2] The next layer downward consists of shared values that are invisible. And [3] The bottom layer consists of shared assumptions that are also invisible yet more difficult to research.

Shared values are invisible (below the surface). For House et al. (2014: vx), values are cultural artifacts because they are human-made and are judgements about the way things should be done. Therefore, values influence patterns of observable human behaviour, including the way the organisation relates to customers or clients. For example, in a healthcare apparatus, standard medical practice could be influenced by a belief in evidence-based medicines or a commitment to patient-centred care. In many universities, medical practice is influenced by an espoused value of are a teaching-centred institution. Employment-related espoused values possess six characteristics:

They contain ‘rightness’ statements with reference to morals or ethics.

They relate to desirable modes of behaviour at a specific moment.

Employee behaviour and experiences are directly influenced by these factors, which act as important moderators.

They are usually linked to strategic aims and tackle inquiries such as "What are we doing?" and "Why are we doing this?".

They direct the choice and appraisal of constituents.

They might differ in terms of male/female, demo- graphic, and cultural aspects (Nindl et al., 2013); for instance, the belief that women in the military should not serve in combat positions.

In cultural analysis, the term 'shared' suggests that organisational members constitute a whole. They are all part of something larger than themselves, and though not every member may internalise and endorse them, all members have been exposed to a set of dominant values.

The third dimension of culture is related to the basic assumptions that supposedly underpin everyday choices made by members of an organisation. These assumptions are thought to be invisible, unconscious, and taken for granted, so their instability is seldom noticed. If it is noticed, it is seldom acknowledged because basic assumptions are so deeply embedded in culture that they are presumed to be the basis for why members of an organisation do what they do. For example, in a healthcare organisation, a basic assumption might be that what is good for the healthcare organization is good for the community it serves.

The basic assumptions/beliefs about human nature, human relationships, the relationship to nature and how the world works form the base upon which employees, who as social beings enter the workplace with life histories and experiences, build their values of how the world should be. As Schein (2017) observes, the occupations that govern work practices (e.g., in the arenas of hospitals and universities) are themselves cultures with learned and shared values and tacit assumptions that influence behaviour. Thus, we know that doctors and academics strongly value autonomy and that practices are often contested to maintain control and authority over knowledge domains (Swan et al., 2002). In terms of leading change, this makes certain kinds of reform in the NHS or universities more challenging.

Life in an organisation is lived through the tangled web of relationships, communities of practice, and shared, sometimes unshared, and often contested, values that bind (or sometimes don’t bind) people in an organisation together. It is also lived in the spaces (the physical and virtual spaces) in which people work and in the technologies they use to work and to communicate with one another and with those outside the organisation. Johnson (1992), in developing the cultural web metaphor, took the premise that organisational culture is rather difficult to pin down and manage (or change), unless one first understands the rather messy (and often rather comfortable) web that is organisational culture. Johnson and Scholes (2002) write that the cultural web is a visual representation of 'the taken for granted assumptions, or paradigm, of an organisation and the physical manifestations of organisational culture.'

The tales recounted inside the organization and how they expose its values and what holds significance for it.

Members’ values and beliefs are reflected in the everyday situations and occurrence of the "r" word.

Organisational forms that can vary from being top-down and rule-bound to being lateral and loose.

The systems of control that may be many or few and whether they reflect a reward or a punishment.

Ways of distributing power.

I. Oligarchy shares power among a few.

II. Autocracy gives power to one.

III. Democracy gives power to many.

Icons and words to represent the group.

The behaviour sustained in all elements of the cultural web is said to be reinforced by the dominant culture or paradigm. The cultural web enables the researcher or practitioner to draw comparisons between organizations in terms of their different cultures. For instance, Kemp and Dwyer (2001) employed this model to articulate the culture of a Sydney hotel, bringing to light the integrationist role of culture. Alternatively, McDonald and Foster (2013: 344) argued that the model had the potential to lay bare the differentiated cultures within an organisation, provided ample and appropriate data were gathered from a range of different organisational groups.