Organizational Culture in the New Normal - A Qualitative Case Study at Tele2

Abstract: In the year 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought tremendous challenges for how organizations were to conduct their day-to-day business. A forced shift towards working remotely was necessary to prevent the virus' spread. The researchers wanted to investigate what remote work would entail for organizational culture. Organizational culture is a widely researched topic, and it is something that affects all organizations. Remote work has become increasingly relevant since the beginning of the pandemic, because many started to work from home, and many still do. There is limited research on how culture is affected by the fact that employees are working from home. This research aims to investigate how remote work has affected organizational culture. A qualitative case study was performed by conducting 16 semi-structured interviews with employees from Tele2, which is a company that works actively with their culture, and who adopted remote work during the pandemic. The empirical findings were analyzed through Schein's Three Levels of Culture. The primary discoveries were that many factors of organizational culture have been affected by remote work. Some of these factors were socialization, leadership, priorities, and ways of working. The main findings were that organizational culture has weakened, and that conditions to create and sustain a strong culture have changed. The combination of this has led to an overall change in the organizational culture. This research contributes theoretically to a relatively unexplored field, and it has practical implications for organizations in the "new normal".