CULTURE ANNOUNCED BY POSTERS - ON CORPORA TE IDEOLOGIES AND THEIR RECEPTIONS

More and more companies use posters as a medium of self-description an d self-representation. Until now, such posters have been completely ig nored by the students of organizations, wrongfully in our opinion. Thi s essay studies corporate culture posters as an expression of ''manage ment of meaning'' and cultural hegemony. For this, two companies serve as examples. The relevance of such posters as means for the productio n and construction of cultural reality can most surely be doubted. The empirical results indicate that lots of employees don't even notice t hem. Furthermore, the symbols used in the posters are ambiguous and po lyvalent. The organizational members do not necessarily understand and interpret the messages in the way intended by the managers of meaning . The essay also debates the value of the posters for organization stu dents. It is a common view that the posters inform of the corporate id eology's content. One of our main results is that they are more: To a certain extent, they serve as a symbol of organizational culture.