The Corporate Culture Survival Guide - Hardcover

Schein, Edgar H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470293713 ISBN 13: 9780470293713

Publisher: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub, 2009

Synopsis

The father of the corporate culture field and pioneer in organizational psychology on today's changing corporate culture

This is the definitive guide to corporate culture for practitioners. Recognized expert Edgar H. Schein explains what culture is and why it's important, how to evaluate your organization's culture, and how to improve it, using straightforward, practical tools based on decades of research and real-world case studies. This new edition reflects the massive changes in the business world over the past ten years, exploring the influence of globalization, new technology, and mergers on culture and organization change. New case examples help illustrate the principals at work and bring focus to emerging issues in international, nonprofit, and government organizations as well as business. Organized around the questions that change agents most often ask, this new edition of the classic book will help anyone from line managers to CEOs assess their culture and make it more effective.

• Offers a new edition of a classic work with a focus on practitioners
• Includes new case examples and information on globalization, the effects of technology, and managerial competencies
• Covers the basics on changing culture and includes a wealth of practical advice

About this title

Review

Culture. We blithely use the term for just about anything--a vibrant culture, a dominant culture, a corporate culture. But do we really know what we're saying, what culture really means? Or do we most often assume that the term is just a convenient way to group those with a common purpose or goal and a method for achieving it? Isn't a corporate culture, for example, just "the way we do things around here"?

No, it's not. In The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, Edgar Schein reveals how that's merely the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg that managers ignore at the peril of their company's future. Underneath lies the much-harder-to-grasp "essence" of the company, the "learned, shared, tacit assumptions on which people base their daily behavior." These assumptions are learned over time and in different internal and external environments, becoming, as Schein puts it, the "residue of success." As these assumptions influence all aspects of how a company functions, discovering their nature and cause is vital to the success of any new organization-wide venture or strategy. In the second half of the book, Schein illustrates how, using this knowledge, a company's culture can be deliberately created or changed. Supported by numerous case-study examples, his advice is pertinent to startups, mature companies, and blended organizations.

If you're the type of manager that needs a quick-fix solution, with simple catch phrases and an easy Five Step Program to Success, this book is not for you. Nor are the benefits to be gained from acquiring the depth of knowledge and insight needed to understand, work with, and transform your corporate culture. Using intelligent, lucid prose, Schein provides this kind of insight and more; he tells cautionary as well as inspiring tales of what this insight can mean for your company, and offers useful suggestions for putting knowledge into practice. --S. Ketchum

From the Back Cover

AS THE WORLD IS BECOMING MORE COMPLEX AND GLOBAL, the issues of corporate culture and subculture are more relevant to leadership and organizational performance. Leadership not only creates culture but is the central force in managing culture evolution and change. This new and revised edition of Schein's groundbreaking book shows how the management of cultural issues now involves the alignment of national, corporate, and occupational cultures. Effective organizations not only need to decide how strongly they want their corporate culture to be based on the rate of technological change, but should also be concerned about the management of the multiple subcultures that arise with increasing technological complexity. More than ever, leaders must have a clear understanding of how to manage in a multicultural environment.

Written for practitioners, Schein reinforces the emphasis on understanding the nature of culture before one leaps into culture change programs, especially in an age where mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and foreign subsidiaries make culture management more difficult. This well-timed revision of The Corporate Culture Survival Guide is the ideal resource for leaders looking to figure out how their corporate culture can aid or hinder current performance and future effectiveness. Reflecting the myriad changes in the field, this new and revised edition contains new examples that target the international, nonprofit and public administration sectors; highlights the effects of globalization, mergers, and technology on organizations; and features a new chapter on the competencies managers need to foster in order to cultivate an effective corporate culture.

The Corporate Culture Survival Guide retains Schein's hands-on methods of observation, interview, and intervention to uncover the nuances as well as the details and dynamics of an organization. The book also contains an appraisal of corporate culture on three levels—behaviors, values, and shared assumptions—and shows how each level affects change initiatives. Providing a clear understanding of the nitty gritty of culture dynamics, this essential resource is filled with new illustrative case studies that clearly show what successful change looks like and demonstrates how to dismantle an ineffective or dysfunctional culture.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0470293713
• ISBN 13: 9780470293713
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240