55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Organizational Culture and Leadership, March 25, 2000
This review is from: Organizational Culture and Leadership (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Paperback)
This is excellent reading, especially for those people who are managing business units or any other functional groups that operates within an organization. The author has done substantial research on the topic of organizational culture and leadership. This is not his first book on the topic, but in this book he really flushes out the impact of culture on the organization and especially for those who are in leadership roles. Schein believes that culture can be transformed into a tool that can be used by managers to better understand the dynamics change in the organization. He points out that culture is a phenomenon that surrounds us at all the time and it is being enacted and created by our interactions with others. He feels that the process of culture creation and management are the essence of leadership. Shein feels that if leaders want to start evolutionary change processes that must be adaptive. In order for them to achieve this goal, they must first understand the dynamics of culture. He feels neither culture nor leadership can be understood or addressed individually because many things in-groups are shared or held in common. Shein presents categories of values that groups routinely use to operate within an organization. He provides a very clear definition and explanation of organizational culture. He talks about how leaders are chosen or not chosen. He stresses the point that cultural understanding is critical for leadership, and is the determining factor in the choice of leaders within a group or organization. Shein talks extensively about group dynamics and presents some interesting information about some of the assumption that are necessary for groups to operate successfully. He also discusses how leaders embed and transmit culture both formally and informally within an organization. He also talks about the different stages organizations go through as they age, and how this process impacts the culture of the organization and its leadership. Shein predicts that organization and their leaders will have to become perpetual learners in the future in order to manage learning and change, if they expect to create a learning organization.
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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar Schein, September 25, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Organizational Culture and Leadership (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Paperback)
I have used Schein's book to teach a course that addresses the leader's role in shaping organizational culture. I find that Schein's approach is deeper and more useful than many--he views and studies organizational culture from an anthropological perspective. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in truly understanding organizational culture and the leader's role in shaping it. My students have all enjoyed it also. It is especially useful and interesting to adult students who work in organizations similar to those that Schein describes.
Marie Cini
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63 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Why do we need to understand culture?", December 25, 2001
This review is from: Organizational Culture and Leadership (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Paperback)
"Cultural analysis illuminates subcultural dynamics within organizations...Many problems that were once viewed simply as 'communication failures' or 'lack of teamwork' are now being more properly understood as a breakdown of intercultural communications...For example, most companies today are trying to speed up the process of designing, manufacturing, and delivering new products to customers. They are increasingly discovering that the coordination of the marketing, engineering, manufacturing, distribution, and sales groups will require more than goodwill, good intentions, and a few management incentives. To achieve the necessary integration requires understanding the subcultures of each of these functions and the design of intergroup processes that allow communication and collaboration across sometimes strong subcultural boundaries...Cultural analysis is necessary if we are to understand how new technologies influence and are influenced by organizations. A new technology is usually a reflection of an occupational culture that is built around new core scientific or engineering concepts and tools...Cultural analysis is necessary for management across national and ethnic boundaries...Organizational learning, development, and planned change cannot be understood without considering culture as a primary source of resistance to change...Given these and related issues, it seems obvious that we must increase our study of culture and put this research on a solid conceptual foundation. Superficial concepts of culture will not be useful; we must come to understand fully what culture is all about in human groups, organizations, and nations so that we can have a much deeper understanding of what goes on, why it goes on, and what, if anything, we can do about it" (from the Preface).
In this context, Edgar H. Schein organizes his book into six parts.
* Part One- In this section, after saying that cultural understanding is desirable for all of us, but it is essential to leaders if they are to lead, he defines the concept of culture and shows its relationship to leadership.
* Part Two- In this section he focuses more on the concept of culture and the less on the concept of leadership. He argues that the content of organizational cultures reflects the ultimate problems that every group faces: dealing with its external environment and managing its internal integration. According to him beyond these external and internal problems, cultural assumptions reflect deeper issues about the nature of truth, time, space, human nature, and human relationships.
* Part Three- In this section he deals with the practical issues of how one can decipher cultural assumptions. He says that the reader will note that the emphasis in this part is practical and oriented toward what leaders, researchers, and consultants can actually do about deciphering culture.
* Part Four- In this section he focuses on leadership, especially the role that leadership plays in creating and embedding culture in a group. He argues that leaders create culture and must manage and sometimes change culture.
* Part Five- The focus of Schein in this section, as well as those in the rest of the book, remains on the leader and how culture change appears from the leader's perspective.
* Part Six- In this section his focus shifts from analysis to normative speculation. He deals with the concept of learning and the implications for leadership and culture of the growing rate of change.
I highly recommend this business classic on organizational culture and leadership.
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