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This manuscript explores the contributions of organizational learning to organizational communication. The study of organizational communication is seen in multi‐dimensional terms as the study of how meanings are created, stored, distributed, and modified in the service of organizational performance and change. An overview of organizational communication is provided and organizational learning and its main assumptions are explained. The authors then demonstrate how the incorporation of organizational learning concepts into organizational communication theory permit the integration and extension of much of what is known about how organizational members communicate, learn, and change. An integrative model is presented which explains how individual and organizational understandings are interrelated.

While the conventional portrayed strategy formulation emphasizing rationality, analysis, and linearity, this paper reexamines the thinking about strategy from a sense‐making perspective. Utilizing the organization's dominant coalition as the focus of analysis and its shared mindset as the key frame for sense‐making, we highlight strategic thinking as planned change and as much more emotional and recursive as well as socially implemented than is usually conceived.

Theoretical development and integration in organizational learning and learning organizations are currently impeded by three conceptual issues—issues of definition, of bridging cognitive and behavioral perspectives, and of linking individual and organizational learning. This paper reviews these issues and suggests how they may be reconciled.

OD conceptualisation has been criticised as being both underdeveloped and too unduly narrow in its focus. Several ways that OD′s conceptualisation might be enhanced are suggested: on the one hand by differentiating its models and theories in terms of their conceptual level or scope, and on the other hand in terms of an enlarged set of fundamental organisational tasks, different levels of change agent intentionality, and the time frame involved in change. These suggested ways of reconceptualising the theoretic possibilities for OD would move it away from its mostly fix‐it, how‐to, internal problem‐solving image.

Organizational culture determines much of what we can do as we attempt to manage change. Effective change strategies and interventional practices will both reflect culture and eventually modify it. Change occurs in and by culture. Change, therefore, must be culturally sensitive. Practitioners need to not only appreciate what organizational culture is and is not, but also to appreciate how alternative types of change are related to culture and the roles that can be performed. This is the thrust of this article.

As organisational culture has become recognised as a significant phenomenon for understanding both managerial and organisational dynamics and development, two requirements have risen. On the one hand, we need a conceptual framework for comprehending culture and, on the other hand, we need methodologies for making culture visible. This article offers both – initially describing what is becoming a major conceptual framework for culture work, and then outlining a workshop methodology for making culture visible. An extended case illustrates both the framework and one form of culture‐surfacing methodology.

Two related issues are offered. One discusses and outlines a focused model from the point of view of the practitioner, i.e. a “manager′s model”. Secondly, the model′s focus is concerned with how a manager can go about initiating a “change project”, i.e. it describes the process of selecting an appropriate way to begin to solve a perceived problem.

Organisational culture has become a phenomenon increasingly demanding attention from responsible managers. This article provides a framework for understanding organisational culture, and describes three roles restaurant managers must perform in order to develop culturally sensitive and competent organisations: cultural spokesperson, cultural assessor, and facilitator of cultural modification. Extensive illustration of these three roles is provided from a study of restaurant chains.

Four perspectives are outlined on organisational phenomena and three types of organisational change. Using those categories, a framework is developed which identifies 12 major organisational communication focuses. That framework facilitates identification of the nature and purpose of organisational communication from each perspective as it relates to each type of organisational change.

A short fable for aspiring teachers and students of organization change. A new slant on “oversimplification”?