Edgar H Schein
2005 Ranking: #36
Ed Schein (b. 1928) joined MIT in 1956 and initially worked under the influence of Douglas McGregor. He has remained there ever since.
The dynamics of groups and Schein's experience of the effects of brainwashing in the Korean War led to a developing interest in corporate culture, a term which Schein is widely credited with inventing. His work on corporate culture culminated in the 1985 book Organizational Culture and Leadership.
Schein returned to the theme of organizational culture with his book The Corporate Culture Survival Guide: Sense and Nonsense about Corporate Culture published in 1999. The message in the book is, according to Schein, that, 'the concept of culture is still misunderstood in organizations, being treated too much as a superficial phenomenon.' In The Corporate Culture Survival Guide Schein aims 'to point out that culture is really a very deep phenomenon and that if managers/leaders are serious about changing culture, they must make an effort to understand how culture really 'works' and what it really is; they must not treat it as a superficial phenomenon, assuming that, if you simply change people's behaviour, you are changing the culture.' More recently Schein has co-authored DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC (2003) the story of the pioneering computer company Digital Equipment Corporation.
Schein's work and the issues he covers slip in and out of fashion. He shrugs his shoulders. 'When I look at a lot of the fads they come back to the same underlying theories, but we have to keep examining the essentials. In a way it is flattering that issues I have thought and written about keep resurfacing. The puzzle is why we have to keep reinventing.'
