The Corporate Culture Survival Guide

"I am writing again, to supplement my longer books of 1985 and 1992 (Organizational Culture and Leadership, first and second editions respectively), and to be more pointed in my argument. There is now abundant evidence that corporate culture makes a difference to corporate performance; we know that leaders increasingly need concepts and tools for working with culture in varied and subtle ways. If you want to take a serious rather than superficial look at culture in organizations, struggle through this book with me-and let the complexity inform you rather than turn you off...In each chapter, I provide the logic of the argument, but I also give you case material and practical suggestions for what you can do to test the ideas for yourself. I hope the chapter titles are self-explanatory; you should feel free to jump around to follow your own questions. I find that learning to see the world through culturally more sophisticated lenses is fun. You see more, and you understand more. I hope that you too discover that it is fun to have cultural insight" (from the Preface).
In this context, Edgar Schein argues that "The bigger danger in trying to understand culture is to oversimplfy it in our minds". Therefore, according to Schein, instead of say that culture is 'the way we do things around here', 'the rites and rituals of our compay', 'the company climate', 'the reward system', 'our basic values', and so on, a better way to think about culture is to realize that it exists at several 'levels'. Thus, he firstly categorizes culture into three levels (more detailed discussion see Chapter Two):
1. 'Artifacts': These are visible organizational structures and processes (hard to decipher).
2.Read more ›

Edgar H. Schein provides an excellent conceptual explanation of culture in general and corporate culture in particular. He shows how cultures arise and explains why it is so hard to examine and change an embedded culture. He also lays out practical plans for assessing culture. These plans are not simple or easy, but they promise great reward if carefully followed. Case studies illustrate the concepts and show how corporate problems can be seen in terms of culture. The first half of the book, which lays out the concepts of culture, is especially clear. The second half, which examines cultural issues in various kinds of organizations, uses more jargon and is a bit murkier. Overall, we [...] recommend this book as especially useful for anyone dealing with change, be it moving to a new organization, considering or coping with a merger or acquisition, or even planning to work with people from another group, company or background.

I was familiar with Schein's earlier book, it having been a prescribed text in an MBA I was doing, so was intrigued with his directions since writing it. I found this book more useful from a practical perspective. In fact, Schein interlaces small sections called "Practical Implications" thoughout, the idea being to get the reader to think about the culture that they exist and work in. Schein makes it clear that corporate culture is a tough area to get clarity on, since we are deeply immersed in it, and not aware of culture's impact on us. It's hard to look at something from the outside (cultural analysis) when working on the inside.
All well and good, a solid practical guide to corporate culture, however where I am finding practical use for Schein's work is in e-business. Schein proves very useful for factoring the cultural dimensions into e-business transformation. I believe that anyone attempting a transformation to become an e-business needs to thoroughly understand corporate culture - something not found in the e-business materials I have seen so far. Schein offers a way of looking at corporate culture that goes beyond the usual platitudes, and attempts to give the reader insights into real understanding. This book should be on the e-business change agent's shelf.