Organizational Culture and Leadership: The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series

"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.

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.

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.

This classic text is ideal for both the executive and the teacher of postgraduates. It acts as a primer to be used to introduce key topics relating to organisations, allowing users to then read the plethora of articles and books about leading organisations, for example, with a critical eye. The whole field is plagued by trendiness, but Schein is a steady light. Keep the book with you whenever you are at an organisational conference or seminar.

This book was a required text for the Organizational Leadership program I am enrolled in. I found the actual book to be a very hard read for me. Its like a textbook from the 1980s. It is boring and has no graphics or color. Just text and more text. I hated reading it.I got a great idea and decided to trade my copy of the book for the Kindle version and I found that the Kindle version of the book worked much better for me. Its still text and more text but it just seemed to work better for me. I liked being able to have access to the Kindle version of the text on my computer or tablet. If not for the Kindle version of the book, I would have given it one star but the Kindle version makes in slightly manageable but its still a horrible read.

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.

One of the best books I have ever read. Schein explains, in very clear and articulate language, about organizational culture, how it evolves, and how it can be changed. He draws on many first hand experiences with multinational corporations in cultural assessments and programs for change. I think reading this book is essential for a broad understanding of how organizations evolve and operate.

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.

The book is certainly not something of the one minute variety and is much more an overview of the main scientific theories on the subjects of culture and leadership and their applications, than a specific recommendation on how things are to be done.In this way it requires a sufficiently cerebral reader, who will actually actively choose the approach most suited to their specific organization, to get the most out of it. But if you are blessed with patience and perseverance the book is a real tour de force.The author provides a pretty comprehensive overview of theories and aspects of culture and leadership and equips the reader with arguments for / against a specific approach in a given setting, or put differently, a map of settings where the approaches would work best.While the examples largely come from the author's own prolific consulting experience and include a multitude of organizations, the majority still stems from the two companies where Schein worked most thoroughly - the DEC and Ciba Geigy. As these two are in many ways polar opposites, they work well for illustrating the points made.As everything is derived from practically first principles, you really get lots of insights into how to identify, explore, understand and finally shape various aspects of culture. This makes the book a useful guide for someone new to an organization (and creating a picture for oneself of it), for someone leading an organization and wanting to change aspects of it, in an M&A context, where companies get merged and acquired (and where the cultural compatibility and the minefields associated therewith are often neglected prior to the deals being struck), etc.As long as you are not expecting answers to fall at your feet within the first handful of pages, and understand yourself as an active participant in discovering the route and then carrying out the journey, the book makes excellent sense. If you are changing into a different organizational (or national) culture with your next job assignment, it is a blessing to at least be prepared with the right mindset / questions, before embarking on the journey.

Although Schein has been the thought leader in organisational cultural studies those who know his work will find little that is new. He misses latest developments in cultural studies (e.g. emergence theory), especially those related to how changes in the social world provide newer ways to see culture.

Thought this would be heavy going but it makes a lot of sense.Probably ideal for anyone doing a management or leadership course.Pretty comprehensive so don't expect to get through it quickly

Great! Book! Super quick delivery!

Schein always writes well and in a contemporary rather than academic way. I feel this makes the subject matter he writes about much more accessible. This was excellent for my MBA studies but I'd recommend this as an interesting read in itself