Organizational Culture and Leadership

Citation

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Chapter Summary

This is the fourth edition, about 430 pages including references and index. The publisher describes it as turning the abstract concept of culture into a tool for shaping the dynamics of organizations and change, updated to reflect today's business realities, with Edgar Schein redefining culture from contemporary research and showing the role leaders play in applying it. The contents run through five parts: defining culture and leadership and the three levels of culture; the dimensions of culture; the leader's role in building, embedding and evolving culture; managed culture change; and the learning culture and multicultural groups. The chapters are listed below in book order.

Part One: Defining Culture and Leadership

The opening chapters are "Organizational Culture and Leadership Defined", "The Concept of Organizational Culture: Why Bother?", "The Three Levels of Culture", "Cultures in Organizations: Two Case Examples" and "Macrocultures, Subcultures, and Microcultures". Together they define culture, justify its use as a concept, introduce the three-level model, which separates visible artifacts from espoused values and underlying assumptions, and illustrate it with two organizational cases before placing organizational culture among larger and smaller cultural units.

Part Two: The Dimensions of Culture

Seven chapters examine what a culture consists of: "Assumptions About External Adaptation Issues", "Assumptions About Managing Internal Integration", then three chapters on deeper assumptions, namely "What Is Reality and Truth?", "The Nature of Time and Space" and "Human Nature, Activity, and Relationships". The part ends with "Culture Typologies and Culture Surveys" and "Deciphering Organizational Cultures", which moves from concepts to the practical task of reading a culture.

Part Three: The Leadership Role in Building, Embedding, and Evolving Culture

Four chapters follow the life of a culture: "How Culture Emerges in New Groups", "How Founder/Leaders Create Organizational Cultures", "How Leaders Embed and Transmit Culture" and "The Changing Role of Leadership in Organizational 'Midlife'". They connect leadership to the formation and maintenance of culture and show how that role changes as an organization matures.

Culture Change and Closing Chapters

The remaining chapters are "What Leaders Need to Know About How Culture Changes", "How Leaders Can Manage Culture Change", "A Conceptual Model for Managed Culture Change", "Culture Assessment as Part of Managed Organizational Change", "Illustrations of Organizational Culture Changes", "New Roles for Leaders and Leadership", "The Learning Culture and the Learning Leader" and "Cultural Islands: Managing Multicultural Groups". They move from how culture changes, through a conceptual model for managed change, the use of assessment and illustrations of change, to new leadership roles, learning cultures and multicultural groups. The book ends with references and an index, and an online instructor's guide is available.

Key Concepts

Part One

• Three levels of culture: artifacts, espoused beliefs and values, and underlying assumptions.
• Macrocultures, subcultures and microcultures: cultural units at different scales within and around organizations.

Part Two

• External adaptation and internal integration: the two groups of issues around which cultural assumptions are examined.
• Deeper cultural assumptions: shared views about reality and truth, time and space, and human nature, activity and relationships.
• Culture typologies and surveys: ways of classifying and measuring culture.

Part Three and Culture Change

• Founder and leader influence: leaders create, embed and transmit culture, and their role changes at organizational midlife.
• Managed culture change: a conceptual model for deliberate change, supported by culture assessment.

Closing chapters

• Learning culture and learning leader: culture that supports continuous learning.
• Cultural islands: managing multicultural groups.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A single, durable framework. The three-level model organizes the whole book, and the reader moves from definition to dimensions to leadership to change in a clear order.
• Cases and application. Two organizational cases appear early, and the later chapters on culture assessment and illustrations of culture change tie the concepts to practice.
• Authorial standing. The publisher presents the work as regarded as one of the most influential management books of all time, and says the fourth edition draws on a wide range of contemporary research.
• Leader-focused. Several chapters examine what leaders do to create, embed, transmit and change culture, which links the concept to management action.

Limitations

• Single-author perspective. The framework is Schein's own, so alternative accounts of culture, such as survey-based typologies, appear in the contents mainly in one chapter on typologies and surveys.
• Length and dense structure. The contents list is long and runs through five parts, so readers who want only the core model must select.
• Edition and date. The fourth edition appeared in 2010; the fifth edition (2016) adds a coauthor and expands the treatment of national culture, so readers seeking the latest version should check which edition is assigned.

Where It Fits in the Course

This book is the standard treatment of organizational culture and leadership in the organizational-psychology list. Morgan's Images of Organisation gives culture one of several metaphors and is a useful first map, whereas Schein develops the idea in depth. Weick's Sensemaking in Organizations and the collection Making Sense of the Organization cover how people create shared meaning, which complements Schein's account of cultural assumptions. Haslam, Reicher and Platow's The New Psychology of Leadership uses social identity to explain how leaders shape groups and contrasts with Schein's account of leaders embedding culture.

Schein's earlier Organisational Psychology is a broader overview of the field by the same author. General texts such as the OpenStax Organizational Behavior and Spector's Industrial and Organisational Psychology treat culture in a chapter and are good starting points before this book.

How to Use This Book

The book is for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and managers who want a serious account of culture. No technical prerequisites are needed, though basic organizational behavior helps.

For a short course, read Part One, then the chapters on deeper assumptions and on deciphering cultures, then the chapters on how leaders embed and transmit culture. For a course on change, add the chapters on managed culture change. Practice by applying the three levels to an organization you know: list its visible artifacts, then its stated values, then ask what assumptions would explain any gaps between them.