Think of an organization you have been part of or which you are familiar.
Describe some of the cultural:1) Artifacts2) Exposed beliefs and values3) Basic underlying assumptions
2
T h e S t r u c t u r e o f C u lt u r e
Culture in general can be analyzed at several different levels, with the term
“level” meaning the degree to which the cultural phenomenon is visible to
you as participant or observer. These levels range from the very tangible,
overt manifestations that you can see and feel to the deeply embedded,
unconscious, basic assumptions that we are defining as the essence of culture or its DNA. In between these layers are various espoused beliefs, values, norms, and rules of behavior that members of the culture use as a way
of depicting the culture to themselves and others. The three major levels of
cultural analysis are shown in Figure 2.1.
Three Levels of Analysis
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Artifacts—Visible and Feelable Phenomena
We think of artifacts as the phenomena that you would see, hear, and feel
when you encounter a new group with an unfamiliar culture. Artifacts
include the visible products of the group, such as the architecture of its
physical environment; its language; its technology and products; its artistic creations; its style, as embodied in clothing, manners of address, and
emotional displays; its myths and stories told about the organization; its
published lists of values; and its observable rituals and ceremonies.
Among these artifacts is the “climate” of the group. Some culture analysts see climate as the equivalent to culture, but it is better thought of
as the product of some of the underlying assumptions and is, therefore, a
manifestation of the culture. Observed behavior routines and rituals are
also artifacts, as are the organizational processes by which such behavior
is made routine. Structural elements such as charters, formal descriptions
of how the organization works, and organization charts also belong to the
artifact level.
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18 O r g a n i z a t i o n a l C u l t u r e a n d L e a d e r s h i p
Figure 2.1 The Three Levels of Culture
1. Artifacts
• Visible and feelable structures and processes
• Observed behavior
––Difficult to decipher
2. Espoused Beliefs and Values
• Ideals, goals, values, aspirations
• Ideologies
• Rationalizations
––May or may not be congruent with behavior and other artifacts
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3. Basic Underlying Assumptions
• Unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs and values
––Determine behavior, perception, thought, and feeling
The most important point to be made about this level of the culture is that it is both easy to observe and very difficult to decipher. The
Egyptians and the Mayans both built highly visible pyramids, but the
meaning of pyramids in each culture was very different—tombs in one,
temples as well as tombs in the other. In other words, observers can
describe what they see and feel but cannot reconstruct from that alone
what those things mean to the given group. If you are entering a new
culture, you will observe lots of things that may or may not make sense to
you, and you will not have the insight to figure them out without asking
insiders some questions.
It is especially dangerous to try to infer the deeper assumptions from
artifacts alone, because your interpretations will inevitably be projections
of your own cultural background. For example, when you see a very informal, loose organization, you may interpret that as “inefficient” if your own
background is based on the assumption that informality means playing
around and not working. Alternatively, if you see a very formal organization, you may interpret that to be a sign of “lack of innovative capacity,”
if your own experience is based on the assumption that formality means
bureaucracy and standardization.
If you live in the group long enough, the meanings of artifacts gradually become clear and people explain to you “why we do it that way.” If,
however, you want to achieve this level of understanding more quickly, you
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T h e S t r u c t u r e o f C u l t u r e 19
must ask insiders why they do what they do? You will then get what we are
calling the espoused beliefs and values.
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Espoused Beliefs and Values
All group learning ultimately reflects someone’s original beliefs and values—
his or her sense of what ought to be, as distinct from what is. When a group
is first created or when it faces a new task, issue, or problem, the first solution
proposed to deal with it reflects some individual’s own assumptions about
what is right or wrong, what will work or will not work. Those individuals
who prevail, who can influence the group to adopt a certain approach to the
problem, will later be identified as leaders or founders, but the group does
not yet have any shared knowledge as a group because it has not yet taken
a common action in reference to whatever it is supposed to do. Whatever is
proposed will be perceived only as what the leader wants. Until the group
has taken some joint action and together observed the outcome of that
action, there is not as yet a shared basis for determining whether what the
leader wants will turn out to be valid.
For example, if sales begin to decline in a young business, a manager may
say, “We must increase advertising” because of her belief that advertising
always increases sales. The group, never having experienced this situation
before, will hear that assertion as a statement of that manager’s beliefs and
values: “She believes that when one is in sales trouble it is a good thing to
increase advertising.” What the leader initially proposes, therefore, cannot
have any status other than a value to be questioned, debated, challenged,
and tested. If the manager convinces the group to act on her belief and the
solution works, then the perceived value that “advertising is good” gradually becomes transformed, first into a shared value or belief and ultimately
into a shared assumption (if actions based on it continue to be successful).
If this transformation process occurs, group members will usually forget that
originally they were not sure and that the proposed course of action was, at
an earlier time, just a proposal to be debated and confronted.
Not all beliefs and values undergo such transformation. First of all, the
solution based on a given value may not work reliably. Only those beliefs
and values that can be empirically tested and that continue to work reliably
in solving the group’s problems will become transformed into assumptions.
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20 O r g a n i z a t i o n a l C u l t u r e a n d L e a d e r s h i p
Second, certain value domains—those dealing with the less controllable
elements of the environment or with aesthetic or moral matters—may not
be testable at all. In such cases, consensus through social validation is still
possible, but it is not automatic. Third, the strategy and goals of the organization may fall into this category of espoused beliefs in that there may be
no way of testing them except through consensus, because the link between
performance and strategy may be hard to prove.
Social validation means that certain beliefs and values are confirmed only
by the shared social experience of a group. For example, any given culture
cannot prove that its religion and moral system are superior to another
culture’s religion and moral system, but if the members reinforce each others’ beliefs and values, they come to be taken for granted. Those who fail to
accept such beliefs and values run the risk of “excommunication,” of being
thrown out of the group. The test of whether they work or not is how comfortable and anxiety-free members are when they abide by them. In these
realms, the group learns that certain beliefs and values, as initially promulgated by prophets, founders, and leaders, “work” in the sense of reducing
uncertainty in critical areas of the group’s functioning. Moreover, as they
continue to provide meaning and comfort to group members, they also
become transformed into non-discussible assumptions even though they
may not be correlated with actual performance.
The espoused beliefs and moral or ethical rules remain conscious and
are explicitly articulated because they serve the normative or moral function of guiding members of the group as to how to deal with certain key
situations as well as in training new members how to behave. Such beliefs
and values often become embodied in an ideology or organizational philosophy, which then serves as a guide to dealing with the uncertainty of
intrinsically uncontrollable or difficult events.
If the beliefs and values that provide meaning and comfort to the group
are not congruent with the beliefs and values that correlate with effective performance, we will observe in many organizations espoused values
that reflect the desired behavior but are not reflected in observed behavior
(Argyris & Schon, 1978, 1996). For example, a company’s ideology may say
that it values people and that it has high quality standards for its products,
but its actual record in that regard may contradict what it says. In U.S.
organizations, it is common to espouse teamwork while actually rewarding
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T h e S t r u c t u r e o f C u l t u r e 21
individual competitiveness. Hewlett-Packard’s highly touted “The HP
way” (Packard, 1995) espoused consensus management and teamwork, but
in its computer division, engineers discovered that to get ahead they had to
be competitive and political.
So in analyzing espoused beliefs and values, you must discriminate carefully among those that are congruent with the underlying assumptions that
guide performance, those that are part of the ideology or philosophy of
the organization, and those that are rationalizations or only aspirations for
the future. Often espoused beliefs and values are so abstract that they can
be mutually contradictory, as when a company claims to be equally concerned about stockholders, employees, and customers, or when it claims
both highest quality and lowest cost. Espoused beliefs and values often
leave large areas of behavior unexplained, leaving us with a feeling that we
understand a piece of the culture but still do not have the entire culture in
hand. To get at that deeper level of understanding, to decipher the pattern,
and to predict future behavior correctly, we have to understand more fully
the category of basic assumptions.
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Taken-for-Granted Underlying Basic Assumptions
When a solution to a problem works repeatedly, it comes to be taken for
granted. What was once a hypothesis, supported only by a hunch or a
value, gradually comes to be treated as a reality. We come to believe that
nature really works this way. Basic assumptions, in this sense, are different from what some anthropologists have called “dominant value orientations,” in that such dominant orientations reflect the preferred solution
among several basic alternatives, but all the alternatives are still visible in
the culture, and any given member of the culture could, from time to time,
behave according to variant as well as dominant orientations (Kluckhohn
& Strodtbeck, 1961). In the United States, the preferred solution is clearly
individualism, but teamwork as a means to an end is accepted.
Basic assumptions, in the sense defined here, have become so taken
for granted that you find little variation within a social unit. This degree
of consensus results from repeated success in implementing certain beliefs
and values, as previously described. In fact, if a basic assumption comes to
be strongly held in a group, members will find behavior based on any other
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22 O r g a n i z a t i o n a l C u l t u r e a n d L e a d e r s h i p
premise inconceivable. For example, in a group whose basic assumption is
that the individual’s rights supersede those of the group, members find it
inconceivable to commit suicide or in some other way to sacrifice themselves to the group even if they had dishonored the group. In a capitalist
country, it is inconceivable that someone might design a business organization to operate consistently at a financial loss or that it does not matter
whether or not a product works.
In an occupation such as engineering, it is inconceivable to deliberately design something that is unsafe; it is a taken-for-granted assumption
that things should be safe. Basic assumptions, in this sense, are similar
to what Argyris and Schon (1996) identified as “theories-in-use”—the
implicit assumptions that actually guide behavior, that tell group members
how to perceive, think about, and feel about things. Basic assumptions,
like theories-in-use, are generally non-confrontable and non-debatable and
hence are extremely difficult to change. To learn something new in this
realm requires us to resurrect, reexamine, and possibly change some of the
more stable portions of our cognitive structure, a process that Argyris and
others have called “double-loop learning,” or “frame breaking” (Argyris &
Schon, 1974, 1996).
Such learning is intrinsically difficult because the reexamination of
basic assumptions temporarily destabilizes our cognitive and interpersonal
world, releasing large quantities of basic anxiety. Rather than tolerating
such anxiety levels, we tend to want to perceive the events around us as
congruent with our assumptions, even if that means distorting, denying,
projecting, or in other ways falsifying to ourselves what may be going on
around us. It is in this psychological process that culture has its ultimate
power.
Culture as a set of basic assumptions defines for us what to pay attention
to, what things mean, how to react emotionally to what is going on, and
what actions to take in various kinds of situations. After we have developed
and integrated a set of such assumptions, we will have created a “thought
world” or “mental map.” We will then be most comfortable with others
who share the same set of assumptions and very uncomfortable and vulnerable in situations where different assumptions operate because either we
will not understand what is going on, or, worse, we will misperceive and
misinterpret the actions of others (Douglas, 1986; Bushe, 2009).
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T h e S t r u c t u r e o f C u l t u r e 23
Culture at this level provides its members with a basic sense of identity
and defines the values that provide self-esteem (Hatch & Schultz, 2004).
Cultures tell their members who they are, how to behave toward each
other, and how to feel good about themselves. Recognizing these critical
functions makes us aware why “changing” culture is so anxiety provoking.
To illustrate how unconscious assumptions can distort data, consider
the following example. If we assume, on the basis of past experience or education, that other people will take advantage of us whenever they have an
opportunity, we expect to be taken advantage of, and we then interpret the
behavior of others in a way that coincides with those expectations. If we
assume that it is human nature to be basically lazy, and if we observe people
sitting in a seemingly idle posture at their desk, we will interpret their
behavior as “loafing” rather than “thinking out an important problem.”
We will perceive absence from work as “shirking” rather than “doing work
at home.”
If this is not only a personal assumption but also one that is shared and
thus part of the culture of an organization, we will discuss with others what
to do about our “lazy” workforce and institute tight controls to ensure that
people are at their desks and busy. If employees suggest that they do some
of their work at home, we will be uncomfortable and probably deny the
request because we will figure that at home they would loaf (Bailyn, 1992;
Perin, 1991).
In contrast, if we assume that everyone is highly motivated and competent, we will act in accordance with that assumption by encouraging people
to work at their own pace and in their own way. If we see people sitting
quietly at their desks, we will assume that they are thinking or planning. If
someone is discovered to be unproductive in such an organization, we will
make the assumption that there is a mismatch between the person and the
job assignment, not that the person is lazy or incompetent. If employees
want to work at home, we will perceive that as evidence of their wanting
to be productive.
In both cases, there is the potential for distortion, in that the cynical
manager will not perceive how highly motivated some of the subordinates
really are, and the idealistic manager will not perceive that there are subordinates who are lazy and are taking advantage of the situation. As McGregor
(1960) noted many decades ago, such assumptions about “human nature”
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24 O r g a n i z a t i o n a l C u l t u r e a n d L e a d e r s h i p
become the basis of management and control systems that perpetuate themselves because if people are treated consistently in terms of certain basic
assumptions, they come eventually to behave according to those assumptions to make their world stable and predictable.
Unconscious assumptions sometimes lead to ridiculously tragic situations, as illustrated by a common problem experienced by U.S. supervisors
in some Asian countries. A manager who comes from a U.S. pragmatic
tradition assumes and takes it for granted that solving a problem always
has the highest priority. When that manager encounters a subordinate who
comes from a cultural tradition in which good relationships and protecting
the superior’s “face” are assumed to have top priority, the following scenario
has often resulted.
The manager proposes a solution to a given problem. The subordinate
knows that the solution will not work, but his unconscious assumption
requires that he remain silent because to tell the boss that the proposed
solution is wrong is a threat to the boss’s face. It would not even occur to
the subordinate to do anything other than remain silent or, if the boss were
to inquire what the subordinate thought, he might even reassure the boss
to go ahead and take the action rather than challenge the boss.
The action is taken, the results are negative, and the boss, somewhat
surprised and puzzled, asks the subordinate what he would have done or
would he have done something different. This question puts the subordinate into an impossible double bind because the answer itself is a threat to
the boss’s face. He cannot possibly explain his behavior without committing the very sin he was trying to avoid in the first place—namely, embarrassing the boss. He may even lie at this point and argue that what the
boss did was right and only “bad luck” or uncontrollable circumstances prevented it from succeeding.
From the point of view of the subordinate, the boss’s behavior is incomprehensible because to ask the subordinate what he would have done shows
lack of self-pride, possibly causing the subordinate to lose respect for that
boss. To the boss, the subordinate’s behavior is equally incomprehensible.
He cannot develop any sensible explanation of his subordinate’s behavior
that is not cynically colored by the assumption that the subordinate at some
level just does not care about effective performance and therefore must
be gotten rid of. It never occurs to the boss that another assumption—
such as “you never embarrass a superior”—is operating, and that, to the
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T h e S t r u c t u r e o f C u l t u r e 25
subordinate, that assumption is even more powerful than “you have to get
the job done.”
If assumptions such as these operate only in an individual and represent his
or her idiosyncratic experience, they can be corrected more easily because the
person will detect that he or she is alone in holding a given assumption. The
power of culture comes about through the fact that the assumptions are shared
and, therefore, mutually reinforced. In these instances, probably only a third
party or some cross-cultural experiences could help to find common ground
whereby both parties could bring their implicit assumptions to the surface.
Even after they have surfaced, such assumptions would still operate, forcing the
boss and the subordinate to invent a whole new communication mechanism
that would permit each to remain congruent with his or her culture—
for example, agreeing that, before any decision is made and before the boss
has stuck his or her neck out, the subordinate will be asked for suggestions and
for factual data that would not be face threatening. Note that the solution
has to keep each cultural assumption intact. We cannot, in these instances,
simply declare one or the other cultural assumption “wrong.” We have to find
a third assumption to allow them both to retain their integrity.
We have dwelled on this long example to illustrate the potency of
implicit, unconscious assumptions and to show that such assumptions often
deal with fundamental aspects of life—the nature of time and space; human
nature and human activities; the nature of truth and how we discover it;
the correct way for the individual and the group to relate to each other; the
relative importance of work, family, and self-development; the proper role
of men and women; and the nature of the family.
Broader assumptions about human nature often derive from the larger
culture in which the organization is embedded or from occupational units
that cut across organizations. In the United States, the assumption that
meetings are a waste of time derives very much from our pragmatic rugged
individualism,which works both against group and team work and immediately types meetings as something to be avoided, even as complex tasks
become more interdependent and require more meetings.
The Metaphor of the Lily Pond
We can summarize this three-level model with a metaphoric lily pond.
The blossoms and the leaves on the surface of the pond are the “artifacts”
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26 O r g a n i z a t i o n a l C u l t u r e a n d L e a d e r s h i p
that we can see and evaluate. The farmer who has created the pond (the
leadership) announces what he expected and hoped for in the way of
leaves and blossoms and will provide publicly accepted beliefs and values
to justify the outcome. The farmer may or may not be consciously aware
that the outcome is really a result of how the seeds, the root system, the
quality of the water in the pond, and the fertilizers he put in combined to
create the blossoms and leaves. This lack of awareness of what actually
produces the results may not matter if the announced beliefs and values
are congruent with how the leaves and blossoms turned out.
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Figure 2.2 The Lily Pond as a Metaphor for Levels of Culture
Source: Artwork by Jason Bowes – Human Synergistics
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T h e S t r u c t u r e o f C u l t u r e 27
However, if the observer notes a discrepancy between what the farmer
claims and what actually comes up as blossoms, they will both have to
examine what is present in the water and in the root system. And if
they want different color blossoms, painting them a different color will
not work; they will have to examine how to change the seeds, the water
quality, the fertilizer—that is, the invisible DNA of the pond. Leaders
who want to change culture cannot do so by painting the blossoms or
pruning the leaves. They have to locate the cultural DNA and change
some of that.
Given this structural model one can analyze any culture, or, for that
matter, any individual’s cultural identity. Let’s look briefly at how this would
apply at the individual or group micro-system level and then in subsequent
chapters apply it to organizations and larger cultural units.
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The Individual from a Cultural Perspective
The individual as a cultural entity can be analyzed in terms of artifacts,
espoused beliefs and values, and underlying basic assumption. We all carry
within us assumptions about the state of the world and about the correct
ways to engage in relationships. Some of those assumptions about relationship have come to be taken for granted and fall into the realm of the
unconscious because we learned early some of the basic rules of how to get
along in different kinds of situations. These assumptions and rules derive
from the macro culture in that every society has learned from its own history what level of communication and openness is workable for people to
get along.
All societies (i.e., macro cultures) evolve rules of etiquette, good manners, and tact that specify what is or is not appropriate to say in any given
situation. Most of us are, therefore, walking repositories of rules that were
taught to us when young and that represent early layers of cultural socialization. We learn as part of our acculturation into the family that in the
interests of getting along with each other, it is important to withhold some
of our perceptions and feelings because to say them out loud might hurt or
offend others. And if we hurt others, that permits them to hurt us back,
which makes social life generally too dangerous. We learn that some of
these things can be said to friends and even more can be said to intimates.
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28 O r g a n i z a t i o n a l C u l t u r e a n d L e a d e r s h i p
However, the basic assumptions about why you cannot say certain things
remain below consciousness, and the process by which you learned them is
probably totally forgotten.
When we enter into a therapeutic or personal-development program,
the leader and the setting usually create a “cultural island” in which some
of the societal rules can be suspended and people are encouraged to be more
open about what they normally would withhold. When the tasks we are
asked to perform in a group require a high degree of collaboration, the team
learning process or “teaming” (Edmondson, 2012) similarly creates conditions where some of our basic assumptions have to be surfaced. The best
example would be to give team members feedback on how we react to their
participation and to own up to our own doubts and fears in relation to task
accomplishment. I have called this “here-and-now humility” to indicate
that in such team situations formal status and rank become less important
than patterns of who is dependent on whom at a given moment in accomplishing a task (Schein, 2016).
In summary, as individuals we can all be observed at the artifact level,
we all have our espoused beliefs and values that may or may not be con
sistent with our behavior, and we all have deeper-level assumptions about
why we do what we do. It is the degree of alignment or congruity between
the three levels that determine how an individual’s “sincerity,” or “integrity”
is judged by others.
The Group or Micro System from a Cultural Perspective
Groups also evolve “hidden agendas,” “have elephants in the room,” and, in
various ways, espouse beliefs and principles to justify their overt behavior.
If we apply the three-level model to group behavior by analyzing whether
or not the observed behavior matches the espoused beliefs and values, we
discover discrepancies that reveal the basic assumptions level (Bion, 1959;
Marshak, 2006; Kantor, 2012).
A simple but telling example occurred in a company manufacturing
team that was dedicated to good team work and espoused a climate of relevant participation by all members. Over several meetings I observed that
one member was consistently ignored after he tried to say something, was
never called on, and seemed to be very much on the margin. I pointed this
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T h e S t r u c t u r e o f C u l t u r e 29
out at one of the meetings and was met with a stony silence, a pause, and
then a continuation of the discussion as if nothing had happened.
After the meeting, the chair pointed out to me that this member had
been one of the important inventors of several of the company’s products,
was still too young to be early retired, and was still potentially useful to
have around for consultation, but there was no place to “park” him except
in this particular group. In early meetings they had welcomed him and
jointly agreed that he was welcome to participate but that he would probably find that most of his ideas were now obsolete. He understood and
accepted this.
My intervention in calling attention to this embarrassed everyone
by surfacing the basic assumption “we accept you as a member but we
all understand that you will not be a real contributing member of the
group.” Any discussion of this assumption would lead to further embarrassment for all concerned. It had become part of the group’s culture to
accept this person as a member without, however, feeling obligated to
take his ideas seriously. The group had evolved the behavioral rule of
“you must be polite and pay attention to him but you don’t have to use
his ideas.”
Do all groups have cultures? It depends on the degree to which a given
group has a shared history of learning together. A group that has constant
change of membership and has not had to learn to do anything together
will not have a culture. But any group that has a shared task, more or less
constant membership, and some common history of learning together will
have its own subculture as well as being nested in the culture of the organizational unit it is in and in the macro cultures of the occupations of its
members, the organization, and the nation.
Summary and Conclusions
This chapter presents a three-level model of culture as the way to describe
and analyze any cultural phenomenon, whether we are talking about an
individual, a micro system, a subculture, an organization, or a macro culture.
It is important to differentiate the observed and experienced “artifacts”
from the “espoused values” and from the “basic underlying assumptions”
that ultimately drive the observed behavior.
Schein, Edgar H., and Peter A. Schein. Organizational Culture and Leadership, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fielding/detail.action?docID=4766585.
Created from fielding on 2021-07-15 21:04:56.
30 O r g a n i z a t i o n a l C u l t u r e a n d L e a d e r s h i p
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Suggestions for Readers
• If you are a scholar or researcher, try to classify all that you observe
and know about the group that you are a member of into the basic
categories of artifacts, espoused values, and basic assumptions. What
additional questions do you need to ask of your colleagues to decipher
the basic assumptions?
• If you are a student or potential employee, take a potential organization you are interested in, visit it to gather impressions and feelings,
and then see whether what the organization claims fits what you have
observed and felt. If you see discrepancies, ask questions to get at the
basic assumptions.
• If you are a change leader, bring together a representative group of
members of the organization you are trying to change and ask them
to identify as many behavioral artifacts of the organization as they
can. List these on flip charts. Then ask the group to identify the major
espoused values of the organization and compare those values with the
artifacts on the charts. Are they consistent? If you find discrepancies,
ask the group to identify what the deeper assumption might be that
would explain the artifacts, especially observed routine behavior.
• If you are a consultant or helper and are sure you know what specific
changes the change leaders have in mind, invite them to bring together
a group from their organization and take it through the preceding exercise to determine where identified beliefs, values, and assumptions
might aid or hinder the proposed change program.
Schein, Edgar H., and Peter A. Schein. Organizational Culture and Leadership, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fielding/detail.action?docID=4766585.
Created from fielding on 2021-07-15 21:04:56.