Internal Communication and Culture: A Theoretical Framework

Internal corporate communication is an inseparable part of public relations. Addressing target groups is becoming more complex due to cultural diversity among customers and employees. Internal corporate communication is undergoing fundamental change. In addition to customers, employees are also among those stakeholders strategically decisive to any company. The members of Generations Y and Z, who have newly established themselves on the labor market in recent years, pose challenges to traditional forms of communicating corporate cultural values with their generation-specific value patterns. In this paper, these challenges are seen as positive opportunities to cast a new cultural perspective on the corporate culture of globally active companies. It is no longer about standardization or localization in the relationship between parent company and subsidiaries or about dominance or competition of divergent national cultural imprints of corporate culture. Instead, it is proposed to take the generational cultural characteristics of Y and Z as an opportunity to adapt the new orientation of the corporate culture accordingly. The advantage lies in the fact that both corporate culture and internal corporate communication can free themselves from the ethical and practical dilemma of cultural differences. Culturally consistent corporate communication with all (including internal) target groups is, therefore, important.