Teaching Organizational Culture Using a Projective Technique: Collage Construction

Although the topic of “organizational culture” is an integral part of syllabi across a wide range of core business classes such as Principles of Management, Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management, few experiential exercises exist that can enhance student understanding and learning of different layers of organizational culture. In this article, the authors describe their experimentation with the use of a qualitative and projective research technique—collage construction—to teach the topic of organizational culture to business students. Although this projective technique has traditionally been used in the consumer research and advertising domains to tap into consumers’ inner feelings, thoughts, and values, the authors provide evidence from business student evaluations that this technique can also be useful in understanding abstract organizational phenomena such as organizational culture in a classroom context.