Filed under: Intranets
An intranet can be thought of as having five purposes or roles, the first four of which are generally well accepted:
- making content available
- delivering communications
- promoting collaboration
- supporting task activities
The fifth purpose, is to reflect, influence and help shape culture.
Organisational culture is often expressed as ‘it’s the way we do things around here’, though this is a less than satisfying explanation.
More helpful is to think of culture as being to an organisation as personality is to a person: essential, unique and difficult to define but surfaces at the point of interaction and shapes the experience of the relationship. A strong culture may only require a single (delightful? belittling?) interaction to inform a staff member, or indeed a client, as to what the organisation’s defining cultural characteristics are.
More generally, culture emerges from the sum total of interactions and organisational relationships.
[September article written by Stephen Byrne, read the full article]
