4.3 Microcultures
A microculture, sometimes called a local culture, refers to cultural patterns of behavior influenced by cultural beliefs, values, norms, and rules based on a specific locality or within an organization. “Members of a microculture will usually share much of what they know with everyone in the greater society but will possess a special cultural knowledge that is unique to the subgroup” (Spradley & McCurdy, 2008, p3.). If you are a college student and you’ve lived in a dorm, you may have experienced what we mean by a microculture. It is not uncommon for different dorms on campus to develop their own unique cultural identities that are distinct from other dorms. They may have their own exclusive stories, histories, mascots, and specializations. Maybe you live in a dorm that specializes in honor’s students or pairs U.S. students with international students. Perhaps you live in a dorm that is allegedly haunted. Maybe you live in a dorm that values competition against other dorms on campus, or one that doesn’t care about the competition at all.
We often refer to microcultures as “local cultures” because they do tend to exist among a small segment of people within a specific geographical location. An increase in hybrid or remote work since the pandemic has resulted in increasing workplace microcultures (Forsythe et al., 2024). Microcultures are perceived to allow smaller teams to thrive and meet their client specific needs while supporting the core values of an organization.
In an October 2024 podcast with hosts of Deloitte Consulting, Trace Arnish, Vice President, Head of HR, Google Cloud explained the microculture of Google Cloud and the larger culture at Google (Mallon, 2024). Arnish mentioned the core value of Google, commonly called “three respects,” includes respecting the user, respecting the opportunity, and respecting each other. When employees uphold these values, it is called “Googleyness.” While these core values are prevalent across the organization, Google Cloud is different. Google has consumer products such as search, YouTube, and Maps and it serves millions of people who use these products. Google Cloud serves enterprise customers- large businesses- whose needs are different from individual customers. Based on the feedback received from the employee sentiment survey and senior leaders, Arnish shared in addition to the core values (the three respects), humility, unity, speed, and ownership were identified as key behaviors of Google Cloud’s microculture. According to Arnish, “…by hyper focusing on those behaviors, we’re able to co-create a vibrant and thriving culture within Google Cloud that’s centered around delighting our customers”.
This section is adapted from What is Culture? in Interpersonal Communication Copyright © by Jason S. Wrench; Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter; and Katherine S. Thweatt available at Interpersonal Communication – Simple Book Publishing licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
