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Ed Schein is angry, and he doesn't much mind who knows. Quite the opposite. He announces that anger-along with frustration and puzzlement- on the very first page of the preface to his concise guide to the corporate culture maze. It is precisely that mix of emotion that has propelled him, in fact, to write what amounts to a supplement to his classic, Organizational Culture and Leadership (first published in 1985, then updated and rereleased in 1992). But just what is the source of that anger? Since he began exploring the corporate culture domain (and more than that, virtually invented and defined the field), practitioners and theorists alike have come to accept the fundamental proposition that corporate culture matters, particularly that corporate culture affects corporate performance. So it's not that corporate culture isn't taken seriously. The problem, in Schein's view, is that the concept has taken on something of a faddish nature. And those who deal with culture as a fad tend to oversimplify, and even misunderstand what it is they are dealing with. Corporate culture, Schein reminds us, is far more complex than many people realize and, simultaneously, far less malleable than many people hope. Over the next nearly 200 pages of text, Schein tries to set the record straight.
A good deal of what follows this impassioned opening amounts to a familiar but succinctly stated multifaceted view of corporate culture. Schein guides the reader through three levels of culture, starting with its most obvious manifestations, referred to as "artifacts." He explores the 11 espoused values" typically inherited from the organization's founders and passed on through its current leadership, before delving into the "underlying assumptions" that reside at the organization's core and shape the internal patterns of member behavior. As powerful as the underlying...