Hi. I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today we're going to talk about small groups and subcultures, and organizational culture. When we have a group of people that forms and remains as a constant group for a period of time, they will gradually develop their own norms.
And group norms are those behaviors and perceptions that that specific group considers to be right, true, or proper. And when we form these groups, we are then forming a subculture. And a subculture is a culture embedded within a larger culture that has their own unique norms specific to that small group or subculture.
So let's look at this example of a subculture. Video gaming is a subculture within the United States, and perhaps throughout the world. And they have their own special or unique norms specific to that video gaming subculture.
So they may have their own language. They use certain acronyms that, if we aren't a part of that subculture, we may have no idea what they're talking about, but that is normal to use those acronyms in that subculture.
Also, in terms of social behavior, the larger culture surrounding that video gaming subculture may think that being social is going out and meeting people face-to-face, whereas in video gaming subculture, social behavior may be going online and talking to each other over a headset while playing a specific game.
Maybe, also, a social behavior could be we're going to have a party, but at the party, we're all going to play a specific video game. And we also see that video gaming subculture has conferences that are specific to video gaming, and those who are part of that subculture choose to attend those conferences to learn more about video gaming and meet other individuals who develop games, and surround themselves with the people involved in that subculture.
Let's talk about organizational culture. Organizational culture is also considered a subculture. So an example of organizational culture could be workplace. And in our organizational culture, or our workplace culture, we have our own office rules and norms-- so what our specific organization or workplace believes that is right, true, and proper behavior and perceptions for that specific group. And these can be formal or informal.
So formal would be those written down rules and policies of our workplace, such as dress code, or informal as well-- maybe how we interact with each other, or how long we spend during our lunch hour. That could be a more informal type of rule or norm within our organizational culture.
Also, we need to know that whether it's a workplace or an organization or another small group, we form our rules and norms around our specific goals and purposes of our group. So we form these norms around factors that will directly or indirectly impact the purpose of our group for being in existence.
So for example, the Girl Scouts-- that's an organization that works together to perform certain tasks such as community building, building self-esteem, and educating young girls, and they have developed their own rules and norms over time because the group has formed to jointly perform these specific tasks and goals of the group.
Some other examples could be the American Legion, which deals with veterans affairs, and specific activist groups that you may be a part of. They all have their own rules and norms, because they have been together for a period of, time and are working together to perform specific goals, purposes, and tasks.
So I'm going to leave you with a couple questions here. I want you think about which subcultures you might belong to. Maybe you belong to a workplace subculture, or another culture similar to the video gaming culture that we talked about. So think about that, and also think about if you can define some of the norms that are specific to that group that you belong to, or subculture, that may be unique to your group alone, and not necessarily a part of the larger culture in which it's embedded upon.
Let's look at our key points, here, before we go on small groups and culture. We know that any group of people that have been constant will develop their own group norms and rules. And we can define these groups as a subculture. So they are cultures within a larger culture that have different group norms than that larger culture around it. And we can also consider our organizations and our workplaces and other social clubs that we may be a part of as an organizational culture and a subculture.
Here are your key terms before we go. Feel free to pause and look at them a little bit closer. Thank you so much, and I can't wait to catch you again next time.