Customer Reviews

Organizational Culture and Leadership (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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

"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.

Organizational Culture and Leadership is a classic work in the field of Organizational Culture Theory and as such it is a good reference to have. The frustration that many companies have, however, is putting theory into practice and unfortunately this book falls short of helping anyone (apart from O.D. PhD's) to do just that. A practical approach to the evaluation and transformation of culture would be more useful for the vast majority of companies.

For example an iterative approach to transformation and alignment using objective diagnostic tools (like the OCP Method developed by O'Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell) and the application of practical "bite-size" changes like leadership development/behvioral change; compensation system change, recruiting model change, organizational structure change, etc. is far more impactful and perhaps more importantly far more implementable. And, of course, as in any change effort, it is important to know whether you are making progress which is all the more reason to utilize an objective and validated measurment/diagnostic method or tool.

I really like Kaplan and Norton's work in tying Culture to Strategy in this area (check out their recent HBR article) and the work ThinkShed is doing based on O'Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell's OCP methodology...very practical, very measurable, very effective and being a web based tool, very very implementable.

In this work, Edgar Schein articulates the importance of understanding organizational culture as a means of implementing change. His theory is that the ability to manipulate culture is a key tool of modern management. He theorizes that organizational culture reflects the leadership and vision of its founder, and that organizations become self-sustaining through buy-in to the culture.

Schein provides a complex model for diagnosing culture and analyzing the values and assumptions of the organization. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding the dynamics of the stage of organizational culture, prior to implementing change.

An interesting point that Schein makes is the need to periodlically "unfreeze culture" and apply a "cognitive reconstruction" -- in short repond to market pressures by becoming more competitive through organizational change.

Schein's work is very thorough and easy to read. My only criticism is the length of the work, which is the result of Schein's many real-life examples that reinforce his points.

Schein has spent most of his practicing life dedicated to the topic of Organizational Culture. Having read numerous books and articles pertaining to this topic, this book "out-Schein's" them all (pardon the play on words). Schein takes a very broad topic like culture and makes it understandable. If you want to learn about Organizational Culture from the World's foremost authority, then buy this book.

Regarding leadership Schein does not fall short, either, however is not as impactful because leadership has been studied more extensively and there are other quality writings about leadership, including Schein's. He does tie the two together nicely providing a new way to look at leadership qualities. Wonderful book.

I have to confess up front I'm a skeptic about "culture management." It was a fad many companies wasted a lot of time and money on. When I was a graduate student in organizational sociology, I loved studying organizational culture but never found much in the "applied" culture literature that persuaded me that business firms ought to be nearly as transfixed by the allure of tweaking their culture as they have been. There's been a lot of hacks making money selling crackpot ideas to companies on the premise that strong culture=high profits. Consultants have to make a living too I guess. I just wish it wasn't giving organizational culture theory such a bad name. Anyhow, Schein is an exception to the rule. Certainly nobody could bad-mouth his academic credentials--having studied at University of Chicago, Stanford and Harvard--he's pretty much about as solid an organizational consultant as you're going to find.

Schein is also a pretty hardcore functionalist and looks at organizational culture principally as a monolithic unified whole. "The Founder" is the all important character in setting the basis of any company culture. A strong founder gives the company a unique set of values that it carries throughout its existence. "Culture" for Schein is a shared set of values and practices. It is an acquisition--and not something all companies have. In his view, it's a good thing and a desirable trait, as it unifies the organization and gives it a direction. That is the functionalist aspect of his theory--essentially org culture functions to hold together and unify the organization and keep it strong. For Schein, the idea of sub-cultures or counter-cultures operating within the same organization makes no sense. An org that has divergent values and practices from department to department is an org that is divided and has a weakened founder culture or.. (horrors) no culture at all. Unlike some theorists in the functionalist camp, Schein is not as assertive in claiming that a strong culture makes a successful company. Still, I think it is fair to say that from his perspective failing companies may well be able to blame the lack of a cohesive culture for some of their problems.

This book has been around for a while now and indeed it is considered a classic of the functionalist approach to culture management and consequently carries with it all the connotations that the "functionalist" label carries. Functionalism has gotten a bad name in sociology over the years and is not held in particularly high esteem in academic circles. Critics call it an inherently conservative theory, focused only on what holds groups together, while at the same time entirely unable to account for things like conflict and other forces that pull groups apart. Some say functionalism is inherently tautological. Personally, I have mixed feelings. I happen to like Emile Durkheim--the father of functionalism--and think we ought to cut him some slack for excessively functionalizing the world because he gave us the field of sociology as a gift. But sociology carries a lot of scars from those days and has tried hard to put functionalism behind it. In more recent years, somehow functionalism spread into psychology (like a disease some would argue). Anyway, Schein's theory tends to appeal rather less to the academic world and more to the business world. It gives CEO's the impression that if they can just get some "culture" going in their company they'll be more successful. To many academics, Schein's theory now looks too simplistic and reductive. Decades of data doesn't tend to support the idea that a strong founder culture makes a company more successful. Moreover, huge successful corporations often have whole divisions that seem to have their own values and practices that may not be shared by other parts of the company. The current view among many academics is to say that "organizations do not ACQUIRE a culture, rather they ARE a culture." Stanford's Joanne Martin is the best known example of this view.

Assuming you think Schein's view on org culture is a correct view, the part of the book that would likely appeal most to executives is Schein's "clinical approach," a methodology to diagnose culture problems. As far as diagnostic approaches go, it is a controversial subject, but I think it's fair to say his is one of the better approaches out there. It's very systematic and tries hard to go deep into understanding more than just a few superficial aspects of organizational culture. Thankfully, Schein doesn't advocate any type of culture survey, since such surveys as a rule mean next to nothing. Still, does this clinical approach really work? Well,.. I don't know. I mean, do any of these approaches really work? In general, the evidence doesn't tend to support the idea that culture management accomplishes what it has tried to accomplish. Schein certainly has a better methodology than most of his counterparts that I've read. Still it's pretty hard to operationalize some of his ideas into an actual plan of action.

In any event, if you're a grad student or a researcher studying organizational culture, you will certainly want to read this book. It is widely referenced in the org culture literature and Schein represents a high water mark for functionalist org behaviorists. If, on the other hand, you're trying to fix a screwed up company that you think has culture problems, you could certainly do worse than to read this book. You might get a useful nugget or two out of it, although I think most executives would find it quite frustrating to try to implement the clinical diagnostic approach simply by using this book as a guideline. If a true application of Scheinian culture management is what you're after, I suspect you're going to have to call the maestro himself and have him send in his team of consultants.

For some business people, "culture" is about abstract, amorphous "soft stuff" that concerns only the human resources department. Enlightened leaders know that culture is about the real stuff of what people believe and value. It's evidence of how they behave. Culture is the result of their assumptions put into practice. It's about the "unwritten rules" they follow in the workplace.

Edgar H. Schein is one of those rare people to earn the right to be called a thought leader. He's even credited with coining the phrase "organizational culture." In this exceptional book he provides a comprehensive analysis of the subject in a style that's refreshingly devoid of sociological jargon.

The book is logically organized into six units:
1. What Culture Is and Does
2. The Dimensions of Culture
3. How to Study and Interpret Culture
4. The Role of Leadership in Building Culture
5. The Evolution of Culture and Leadership
6. Learning Cultures and Learning Leaders

Although Schein provides a solid overview of the most relevant research in the field, he keeps the reader's feet on the ground by focusing on practical, real-world case studies.

If you're looking for a solid reference on the role of culture in your organization, there's not a better choice than this classic by the man whose name is virtually synonymous with the subject.

Mrs. Schein Organizational Culture framework must be one of the most important ones to study and understand organizational behavior. Mr. Schein's clinical psychology approach lead us to a very deep explanation about what kind of personal, groups and organizational dynamics are involved in the process of stability and change in an organization. A very interested framework including inconscious references. The clinical diagnostic approach Mr. Schein offers here is a very interesting methodology every organizational research or practitionaire must know and think about.