Abstract:
The purpose of this honors thesis is to bring together two major parts of my life. Through out my college career I was very involved in student organizations and I was always looking for ways to improve the organizations I was in. I attended many leadership conferences and participated in many outstanding groups. I began to wonder what it was that made these groups work so well together and how could I replicate that group cohesiveness into my own organization and help others do the same? Those questions lead to the study of community, which is a subject that was addressed briefly at a leadership conference I had attended. After finding nothing there, I asked my honors colloquium professor, Dr. Marcy Meyer, if there was a topic in the study of Speech Communication that embodied the ideas and concepts of community. She pointed me in the direction of Organizational Culture. After a long discovery period of what this subject actually is, I find myself at the end, presenting the completed work of my honors thesis; the combination of student organizations and the scholarly field of Organizational culture.