Artifacts - Organizational Culture

In the last byte, we looked at how organizational culture has different layers and visually understood what each layer contains. In today's byte, we begin discussing about Artifacts.

Artifacts refer to the symbols of culture in physical and social work environement. Clearly these are the most visible and accessible level of culture. We shall discuss three of these in today.

Personal Enactment - refers to the behavior that reflects the organization's values. For example: the way a manager at the top of he organizational hierarchy      behaves with his subordinates could reflect what the organization's culture would be like.

Rituals - refers to every day practices that are not repeated over and over. Often these are unwritten, but they send a clear message about "the way we do things around here". For Ex: Imagine a case where Calling employees in an organization with their first name, and another where people always put refer each other with Mr. Mrs. etc and their surnames!

Symbols - refer to the communication about an organizational culture through unspoken messages. These are representative of organizational identity and membership to employees. These also help build solidarity in the organizations.