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Book Review: Organizational Culture and Leadership

This book review summarizes the book "Organizational Culture and Leadership" by Edgar H. Schein. It discusses how the book lays a foundation for understanding organizational culture, what it is, how it is created and sustained. It details that culture and leadership are intertwined and inseparable. The book also describes how to study and interpret organizational culture, both from insiders and outsiders, and how deciphering culture assists in assessing if the culture aligns with organizational strategy. The review emphasizes that the book is essential reading for leaders, managers and anyone working in organizations to understand culture.

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Himanshu Solanki
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70 views3 pages

Book Review: Organizational Culture and Leadership

This book review summarizes the book "Organizational Culture and Leadership" by Edgar H. Schein. It discusses how the book lays a foundation for understanding organizational culture, what it is, how it is created and sustained. It details that culture and leadership are intertwined and inseparable. The book also describes how to study and interpret organizational culture, both from insiders and outsiders, and how deciphering culture assists in assessing if the culture aligns with organizational strategy. The review emphasizes that the book is essential reading for leaders, managers and anyone working in organizations to understand culture.

Uploaded by

Himanshu Solanki
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Book Review: Organizational Culture and

Leadership

Abstract
Written by Dr. Edgar H. Schein and published in 1992, Organizational Culture and
Leadership is a must read for all who live and work in organizations. Leaders,
managers, members, and consultants will especially want to digest its rich cultural
descriptions and classic principles for understanding and managing organizational
culture and leadership.

Introduction
Seldom does the act of reading evoke a new goal or path to a future. Such was the
case for me when I read Dr. Edgar H. Schein's, Organizational Culture and
Leadership, second Edition. For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Schein, he is a
Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT. His specialties are
social psychology, OD and change, culture, leadership development, career
dynamics, organizational learning, and cognitive thought processes-to name a few
areas of expertise. His accomplishments are vast

Review
Organizational Culture and Leadership, is a bedrock text for those who teach
culture. It should also be required reading for organizational leaders, managers,
members, and consultants-and anyone interacting with living and breathing
organizations.

Part I,
"What Culture Is and Does," lays a foundation for understanding culture-what it is,
why it is so important, and how cultures are created and sustained, including
conditions required for formation. It details how cultures manifest themselves in
organizations. Part I introduces a key theme that carries throughout, which is that
leadership and culture are synonymous. It is nearly impossible to sufficiently
address one without the other. "These dynamic processes of culture creation and
management are the essence of leadership and make one realize that leadership and
culture are two sides of the same coin"
For readers who might not find culture concepts easy to understand in the abstract,
Dr. Schein provides rich descriptions of contrasting cultures in action, observed
from his days working as an external consultant in these documented
organizations. As a result, most readers will likely recognize some component or
manifestation of their own culture in these descriptions.
Part I further hones reader understanding by clarifying that culture's components
sometimes ill-perceived as its sum total (artifacts, espoused values, and basic
assumptions) are more like ingredients in a complex recipe. For it is only after an
organization's deep, basic assumptions are learned, shared, reinforced, tested, and
successfully-and repeatedly over time-tried under crisis conditions that a
paradigm . An organization's paradigm, like a pair of strong prescription glasses,
impacts the way members perceive and interact with the world around it. Finally, it
is then that paradigms and cultural components become predictable, patterned, and
strategically manageable.

Part II,
"The Dimensions of Culture," details culture's covert, deeper dimensions, the
categorical anchors around which a group's shared basic assumptions form: "The
nature of reality and truth.. .time.. .space.. .human nature.. .human activity.. .human
relationships" Schein explains, "To understand the content and dynamics of
culture, we must develop a model of how basic assumptions arise and why they
persist. We need such a model because ultimately culture covers all aspects of
group life"

Part III,
"How to Study and Interpret Culture," Schein describes practical ways to decipher
culture from the viewpoints of both organizational insiders and outsiders:
This part of the book deals with the practical issue of how one can decipher
cultural assumptions. Chapter Eight focuses on helping organizations decipher
their own assumptions... In Chapter Nine the focus is on deciphering cultural
assumptions when an outsider needs to understand a culture better for purposes of
generating new knowledge for others outside the organization.
Here the difference between "deciphering" and "assessing" culture gains stature, as
do role based cultural competencies for managers, members, leaders, and
consultants. Only after cultural assumptions are accurately deciphered are they
assessed for their degree of congruency with a strategy. Finally, it is important to
note that strong, congruent cultures, when combined with sound strategy, create
enabling conditions (a kind of repetitive likelihood) capable of producing an
organization's greatest business results. Likewise, strong cultures with weak
strategies will consistently execute the weak strategies very well.

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