Organizational Culture and Leadership

It gives me what I was loping for. It is well written. Not too intellectualist even if it could well be.The author really strived to make accessible the understudying of the notion of culture and how it is manifested in organizations and how to deal with it to bring about change.I will recommend the book to scholars and students looking to have of a good grasp of the concept of culture and organizational culture and how to perform some sort of culture analysis to deal with change issues in organizations.

I was required to purchase this book for an organizational culture class and I am grateful for the experience. Ed Schein is a respected leader in the topic of organizational leadership and after reading this book I understand why. He covers the topic of from nearly every perspective necessary to gain working knowledge of culture change work. A must read for anyone in a leadership position, doing planned change work or in organizational development.

"Organizational Culture and Leadership" is perhaps the most in-depth work on the subject of organizational culture. It is the more academic and more in-depth version of the Corporate Culture Survival Guide by the same author. The book is about 400 pages and consists of five parts.Part one provides the basics of the rest of the book. It defines organizational culture and other types of culture. It also describes Schein's three levels in which organizational culture is represented in organizations: artifacts, believes and values, assumptions. It also introduces the two case studies that are used throughout the book: DEC and Ciba-Geigy.Part two explores different dimensions of culture. It doesn't limit itself to organizational culture but also to the different assumptions in national culture. First it looks at assumptions related to adaptations (to external events) and internal integration. Then it dives in several dimensions of culture such as reality, time, space and relationships. Ed Schein devotes a chapter to explain why most organizational cultural dimensions and surveys are too much a simplification of reality and introduces a bit on how to decipher an organizational culture.Part three looks at culture over time. It starts with how culture evolves in new groups (interesting!) and from there looks at the different stages of organizations and how culture evolves. This part has quite a lot of duplication with the Corporate Survival Guide book of the same author (unfortunately for those who read both). It also explores what leadership can do to change or evolve the culture.Part four and five focuses a bit more on the leadership role in evolving and changing the organizational culture. It describes in depth Schein's organizational assessment method to explore the organizational culture in one particular dimension that matters for some change that is wanted in the organization. Part 5 links the book to the larger topic of learning organizations and defines what a learning culture and a learning leader is.I enjoyed "Organizational Culture and Leadership" quite a lot. It is thorough and a bit repetitive at times (especially for people who have read Ed Schein's Corporate Survival Guide). Some parts were better than others. I especially enjoyed the culture creation in new groups and the parts about learning organizations. But the book is definitively recommended for anyone who is interested in organizational culture or involved in attempting to change an organizational culture. For those who read Ed Schein's Corporate Survival Guide, there will be a lot of repetition and the case studies are the same (though more detail). 4 stars.

This book really helped me to understand why our Operational Excellence deployment was not working. Our OE deployment has cultural transformation as its mission versus just teaching Lean Six Sigma improvement tools. This book provided me with a basic understanding of the components of culture and how to influence them.Also, I think the book is written a layman's level. Organizational culture is a complex topic, but the author develops a concise model that he exercises for the reader with real-world research examples.I highly recommend this book.

We all, I suspect, feel that there are things we can't quite see or explain but are shaping our experiences at work. Mr. Schein illuminates the fabric of our work life(organizational culture) so that we can better understand how action and reaction are caused or affected by the particular work culture. I found this very enlightening leading to a number of eureka moments. It was also somewhat embarrassing that I had missed so much of this over my work career! A must read for those switching jobs or careers.

It certainly a better read than some business books I have read. I recommend it if you are a leader in any organization.

In depth, yet easy to read, outlines how to understand one's organization from the broad sense of cultural influences. A lifetime of work put into simple language with appropriate references to businesses and corporations Schein advised. Takes the mystery out of why organizations will do some things and will not do others. And how to move them toward understanding and progress. Brilliant.

Great book for someone like myself who has not thought much in depth about this subject and where each turn of the page introduces and explains "new" thoughts about corporate culture characteristics and anthropology. Clearly written, easy to understand with good examples. Edgar Schein willingly shares his rich ground level experience which I found both insightful and entertaining at times as I related the ideas presented to my personal corporate culture experience over past 25 years.