Culture has many different definitions in academic and business literature. But there is a fundamental choice you have to make when deciding how you define culture.  You either see it as something an organization HAS or something an organization IS.

If you choose to define culture as something an organization HAS, you are looking at it as an asset, a thing, a definable something that can be managed, controlled, and that has predictable dimensions to it. If an organization has a culture, then the organization itself stands apart and can objectively perceive and rationalize its ‘culture’ just like it can rationalize a building it owns, an organization chart, a piece of software, etc.

If you choose to define culture as something an organization IS, you are accepting that culture is the combination of shared experiences between the participants, distinct and different from any of their individual experiences.  It can be shared through stories, rituals, traditions, interpretations, and both subtle and overt indications of power, control, and decision making.

Theorists like Schein and Kotter have worked through nuanced definitions of culture that can help you to think through what position you take on culture. Personally, I’m a social constructionist, and I subscribe to the idea that an organization IS its culture and the culture is the organization.  Further, I believe that culture is defined as people communicate with each other, and that it continuously emerges and is shaped by then communication that flows through the organization, through common experiences, unpredictable incidences, and the highly managed communication of which change management people are so fond.

Edgar Schein ( and John Kotter (from Business Insider) respectively: