Organizational Culture and Leadership: Schein's Classic, and What the Research Says

What the book argues

Organizational Culture and Leadership is by Edgar H. Schein, with Peter A. Schein on the fifth edition. Wiley published that edition in December 2016 in its Jossey-Bass Business and Management Series (Wiley, n.d.; Google Books, n.d.; Open Library, n.d.). Wiley describes Edgar Schein as the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT Sloan and calls him the father of organizational culture (Wiley, n.d.).

The publisher presents the book as the work that defined the field, updated and expanded, with about a quarter of the material new or revised. This edition expands the focus on how national cultures influence culture inside organizations, and explains how the role of leadership varies with the age of the organization (Wiley, n.d.). The publisher's description on Google Books adds that the book digs into assumptions and typologies to decipher culture, and its contents include cases of a young American engineering firm, a mature Swiss-German chemical company and a Singapore government organization, along with chapters on how culture begins with founders and on a model of change management and the change leader (Google Books, n.d.).

My gloss: culture lives in assumptions people stop noticing, so changing it starts with making them visible.

Who it is for

The publisher calls it a classic reference for managers and students and a resource for scholars, consultants and leaders (Wiley, n.d.). In practice it suits someone who has to diagnose or change a culture and wants the full model, not a summary. Most managers will get more quickly from Schein's shorter Humble Inquiry, and can come here for depth.

What the research says

Schein's model is set out and illustrated through cases, not tested in controlled trials, and I found no trial of it in the evidence I use. Two findings bear on how the book is used.

Culture is hard to measure well, at least in behavioral health. Powell and colleagues (2021) reviewed measures of organizational culture, climate and implementation climate in behavioral health. According to their abstract, they found several promising measures, but the overall state of measurement was poor, with limited evidence that the measures detect change or predict outcomes. That fits the book's focus on deeper assumptions, which a survey may not reach, and it is a warning for anyone who reports a culture change from a single survey score.

Culture goes with team learning. Nellen, Gijselaers and Grohnert (2020) pooled 50 studies of what drives learning in teams. According to their abstract, team learning was moderately associated with organization-level factors including top-level leadership and organizational culture, and culture and job resources were also associated with team emergent states, a group that includes psychological safety. These are correlations, but they fit Schein's view that culture shapes what people inside an organization learn.

Readiness surveys mostly measure the setting. Miake-Lye and colleagues (2020) reviewed readiness-for-change surveys in health care. According to their abstract, about two thirds of the 1,370 items were about the setting inside the organization, such as climate, communication and culture. Culture is part of what these surveys ask about when they judge whether an organization is ready.

Where the evidence is thin

The book's model of culture has not been tested in a controlled way in the evidence I use, and the research mostly shows that culture is associated with other outcomes, not how to change it. The best evidence on measurement is a caution rather than a tool. For the middle layer specifically, see the Atlas answer on whether middle managers can change culture.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

This mapping is my judgment. Schein's idea of culture as assumptions sits under the culture ring of the Unfrozen Loop, the ground every part stands on. Making assumptions visible fits the week-0 baseline, writing down where things stand before you change anything, and Make sense together, top included, where the people above say out loud what a change costs. The measurement finding is a reason to compare against that baseline using what people say and do, not only a survey score.

What I take from it

This is the book to read when a change keeps failing for reasons nobody can name. The research adds humility about measuring culture. Before your next culture initiative, ask three groups at different levels to describe how a decision really gets made, and compare their answers. The gaps are where the assumptions are. For more on Schein, see the encyclopedia entry, and for more books, the change management reading list.