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Organisational Culture and Leadership, by Edgar Schein
From Issue Eleven of our newsletter.
This is the third edition of the book by management guru Edgar Schein: the second was published in 1992. It is a comprehensive study of culture, leadership and the complex interactions between the two. Over half of the book is taken up with dissecting culture, in some detail and often in a very philosophical sense. Schein progresses from defining culture and describing its development and its various levels, to exploring the nature of time, space and humanity in order to explain why people in organisations act and think the way they do. He goes on to discuss methods of characterising and assessing culture, including a look at the problems a consultant can face when coming in from outside and trying to decipher a company’s ways of thinking.
The rest of the book is specifically about leadership as it relates to culture – how leaders influence, and often create, a company’s culture, the way companies grow and change, and how leaders can and should achieve planned changes. Three chapters are devoted to the specifics of planned change: the necessity of conceptual changes, unfreezing and refreezing the culture, reducing anxiety and making employees feel safe, coping with the complexity involved in cultural shifts. A ten-step culture assessment process is laid out. The final chapter deals with ‘the learning culture and the learning leader’.
The book is not a lightweight read, but it gives many real-life examples of companies to illustrate its arguments – usually companies that Schein himself has worked with and can give an inside view of. The combination of the theoretical points and the concrete examples make it both interesting and relevant. As well as being a good book to read from start to finish, it would be useful as a reference for senior managers and executives, and for people working in the domain of organisational change.