Communication connected to organizational culture : A phenomenological study of cooperation between the academic world and small private companies

Abstract: This project was conducted as a phenomenological study, focusing on organizational culture connected to communication, of the collaboration between the academic world and small private companies. The purposes were to get a deeper understanding of culture and communication and to use phenomenology as a research approach, to see what it can contribute with. Data collection was obtained by an internet questionnaire that held both a projective test and questions with predetermined answer alternatives. Analysis was conducted with the help of Sphinx and Minerva MCA software. The analysis showed that communication, in different forms, seems to be important to the participants. There also seems to be connections between organizational culture and communication and that there probably are underlying assumptions that affect both collaboration and communication. Unforeseen factors, such as the fixation about age differences and the experiencing of educational situations, were found. Phenomenology as a method shows that it helps to expose the core of the subject you are looking at, that it's applicable to our subject of research and that it gives interesting answers with the help of underlying theories.