Week 6 Discussion-Shaping Culture

Organizational Culture and Leadership

Third Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schein, Edgar H. Organizational culture and leadership / Edgar H. Schein.—3rd ed.

p. cm.—(The Jossey-Bass business & management series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7879-6845-5 (alk. paper)

1. Corporate culture. 2. Culture. 3. Leadership. I. Title. II. Series. HD58.7.S33 2004 302.3'5—dc22

2004002764

Printed in the United States of America THIRD EDITION

HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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T H E C O N C E P T O F O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L C U LT U R E :

W H Y B O T H E R ?

Culture is an abstraction, yet the forces that are created in social and organizational situations that derive from culture are powerful. If we don’t understand the operation of these forces, we become vic- tim to them. To illustrate how the concept of culture helps to illu- minate organizational situations, I will begin by describing several situations I have encountered in my experience as a consultant.

Four Brief Examples

In the first case, that of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), I was called in to help a management group improve its communica- tion, interpersonal relationships, and decision making. After sitting in on a number of meetings, I observed, among other things, (1) high levels of interrupting, confrontation, and debate; (2) exces- sive emotionality about proposed courses of action; (3) great frus- tration over the difficulty of getting a point of view across; and (4) a sense that every member of the group wanted to win all the time.

Over a period of several months, I made many suggestions about better listening, less interrupting, more orderly processing of the agenda, the potential negative effects of high emotionality and con- flict, and the need to reduce the frustration level. The group mem- bers said that the suggestions were helpful, and they modified certain aspects of their procedure; for example, they scheduled more time for some of their meetings. However, the basic pattern did not change. No matter what kind of intervention I attempted, the basic style of the group remained the same.

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In the second case, that of the Ciba-Geigy Company—a large multinational chemical and pharmaceutical company located in Basel, Switzerland—I was asked, as part of a broader consultation project, to help create a climate for innovation in an organization that felt a need to become more flexible in order to respond to its increasingly dynamic business environment. The organization con- sisted of many different business units, geographical units, and func- tional groups. As I got to know more about these units and their problems, I observed that some very innovative things were going on in many places in the company. I wrote several memos that described these innovations and presented other ideas from my own experience. I gave the memos to my contact person in the company with the request that he distribute them to the various geographic and business unit managers who needed to be made aware of these ideas.

After some months, I discovered that those managers to whom I had personally given the memo thought it was helpful and on tar- get, but rarely, if ever, did they pass it on, and none were ever dis- tributed by my contact person. I also suggested meetings of managers from different units to stimulate lateral communication, but found no support at all for such meetings. No matter what I did, I could not seem to get information flowing, especially laterally across divisional, functional, or geographical boundaries. Yet everyone agreed in prin- ciple that innovation would be stimulated by more lateral commu- nication and encouraged me to keep on “helping.”

In the third example, Amoco, a large oil company that was eventually merged with British Petroleum (BP), decided to cen- tralize all of its engineering functions in a single service unit. Whereas engineers had previously been regular parts of projects, they were now supposed to sell their services to clients who would be charged for these services. The engineers resisted violently and many of them threatened to leave the organization. We were unable to reorganize this engineering organization to fit the new company requirements.

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In the fourth example, Alpha Power, an electric and gas utility that services a large urban area, was faced with having to become more environmentally responsible after the company was brought up on criminal charges for allegedly failing to report the presence of asbestos in a local unit that had suffered an accident. Electrical workers, who took pride in their “heroic” self-image of keeping the lights on no matter what, also held the strong norm that one did not report spills and other environmental and safety problems if such reports would embarrass the group. I was involved in a multi- year project to change this self-image to one in which the “heroic” model would be to report all safety and environmental hazards, even if that meant reporting on peers—or bosses. All employees were supposed to adopt a new concept of personal responsibility, teamwork, and openness of communication. Yet no matter how clear the new mandate was made, safety problems continued wher- ever peer group relations were involved.

I did not really understand the forces operating in any of these cases until I began to examine my own assumptions about how things should work in these organizations and began to test whether my assumptions fitted those operating in my clients’ systems. This step—examining the shared assumptions in the organization or group one is dealing with and comparing them to one’s own—takes one into cultural analysis and will be the focus from here on.

It turned out that at DEC, an assumption was shared by senior managers and most of the other members of the organization: that one cannot determine whether or not something is “true” or “valid” unless one subjects the idea or proposal to intensive debate; and fur- ther, that only ideas that survive such debate are worth acting on, and only ideas that survive such scrutiny will be implemented. The group assumed that what they were doing was discovering truth, and in this context being polite to each other was relatively unim- portant. I became more helpful to the group when I realized this and went to the flip chart and just started to write down the various ideas they were processing. If someone was interrupted, I could ask

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them to restate their point instead of punishing the interrupter. The group began to focus on the items on the chart and found that this really did help their communication and decision process. I had finally understood and entered into an essential element of their cul- ture instead of imposing my own.

At Ciba-Geigy I eventually discovered that there was a strong shared assumption that each manager’s job was his or her private “turf,” not to be infringed on. The strong impression was commu- nicated that one’s job is like one’s home, and if someone gives one unsolicited information, it is like walking into one’s home unin- vited. Sending memos to people implies that they do not already know what is in the memo, and that is potentially insulting. In this organization managers prided themselves on knowing whatever they needed to know to do their job. Had I understood this, I would have asked for a list of the names of the managers and sent the memo directly to them. They would have accepted it from me because I was the paid consultant and expert.

At Amoco I began to understand the resistance of the engineers when I learned that in their occupational culture there are strong assumptions that “good work should speak for itself” and “engineers should not have to go out and sell themselves.” They were used to having people come to them for services and did not have a good role model for how to sell themselves.

At Alpha Power I learned that all work units had strong norms and values of self-protection that often overrode the new require- ments imposed on the company by the courts. The groups had their own experience base for what was safe and what was not, which they were willing to trust, whereas the tasks of reporting environ- mental spills and cleaning them up involved new skills that work- ers were eventually willing to learn and collaborate on.

In each of these cases I initially did not understand what was going on because my own basic assumptions about truth and turf and group relations differed from the shared assumptions of the members of the organization. And my assumptions reflected my occupation as a social psychologist and organization consultant,

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while the group’s assumptions reflected in part their occupations as electrical engineers, chemists, and electrical workers.

To make sense of such situations requires taking a cultural per- spective; learning to see the world through cultural lenses; becom- ing competent in cultural analysis—by which I mean being able to perceive and decipher the cultural forces that operate in groups, organizations, and occupations. Once we learn to see the world through cultural lenses, all kinds of things begin to make sense that initially were mysterious, frustrating, or seemingly stupid.

Culture: An Empirically Based Abstraction

Culture as a concept has had a long and checkered history. It has been used by the layman as a word to indicate sophistication, as when we say that someone is very “cultured.” It has been used by anthropologists to refer to the customs and rituals that societies develop over the course of their history. In the last several decades it has been used by some organizational researchers and managers to refer to the climate and practices that organizations develop around their handling of people, or to the espoused values and credo of an organization.

In this context, managers speak of developing the “right kind of culture,” a “culture of quality” or a “culture of customer service,” suggesting that culture has to do with certain values that managers are trying to inculcate in their organizations. Also implied in this usage is the assumption that there are better or worse cultures and stronger or weaker cultures, and that the “right” kind of culture will influence how effective the organization is. In the managerial liter- ature there is often the implication that having a culture is neces- sary for effective performance, and that the stronger the culture, the more effective the organization.

Researchers have supported some of these views by reporting findings that cultural “strength” or certain kinds of cultures cor- relate with economic performance (Denison, 1990; Kotter and Heskett, 1992; Sorensen, 2002). Consultants have touted “culture

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surveys” and have claimed that they can improve organizational performance by helping organizations create certain kinds of cul- tures, but these claims are based on very different definitions of cul- ture than what I will be arguing for here. As we will see, many of these usages of the word culture display not only a superficial and incorrect view of culture, but also a dangerous tendency to evalu- ate particular cultures in an absolute way and to suggest that there actually are “right” cultures for organizations. As we will also see, whether or not a culture is “good” or “bad,” “functionally effective” or not, depends not on the culture alone, but on the relationship of the culture to the environment in which it exists.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of culture as a concept is that it points us to phenomena that are below the surface, that are powerful in their impact but invisible and to a considerable degree unconscious. In that sense, culture is to a group what personality or character is to an individual. We can see the behavior that results, but often we cannot see the forces underneath that cause certain kinds of behavior. Yet, just as our personality and character guide and constrain our behavior, so does culture guide and constrain the behavior of members of a group through the shared norms that are held in that group.

To complicate matters further, one can view personality and character as the accumulation of cultural learning that an individ- ual has experienced in the family, the peer group, the school, the community, and the occupation. In this sense, culture is within us as individuals and yet constantly evolving as we join and create new groups that eventually create new cultures. Culture as a concept is thus an abstraction but its behavioral and attitudinal consequences are very concrete indeed.

If an abstract concept is to be useful to our thinking, it should be observable and also increase our understanding of a set of events that are otherwise mysterious or not well understood. From this point of view, I will argue that we must avoid the superficial models of culture and build on the deeper, more complex anthropological models. Culture as a concept will be most useful if it helps us to bet-

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ter understand the hidden and complex aspects of life in groups, organizations, and occupations, and we cannot obtain this under- standing if we use superficial definitions.

What Needs to Be Explained?

Most of us, in our roles as students, employees, managers, research- ers, or consultants, work in and have to deal with groups and orga- nizations of all kinds. Yet we continue to find it amazingly difficult to understand and justify much of what we observe and experience in our organizational life. Too much seems to be bureaucratic or political or just plain irrational—as in the four cases that I described at the beginning of this chapter.

People in positions of authority, especially our immediate bosses, often frustrate us or act incomprehensibly; those we consider the leaders of our organizations often disappoint us. When we get into arguments or negotiations with others, we often cannot under- stand how our opponents could take such ridiculous positions. When we observe other organizations, we often find it incompre- hensible that smart people could do such dumb things. We recog- nize cultural differences at the ethnic or national level, but find them puzzling at the group, organizational, or occupational level.

As managers, when we try to change the behavior of subordi- nates, we often encounter resistance to change to an extent that seems beyond reason. We observe departments in our organization that seem to be more interested in fighting with each other than get- ting the job done. We see communication problems and misunder- standings between group members that should not be occurring between reasonable people. We explain in detail why something dif- ferent must be done, yet people continue to act as if they had not heard us.

As leaders who are trying to get our organizations to become more effective in the face of severe environmental pressures, we are sometimes amazed at the degree to which individuals and groups in the organization will continue to behave in obviously ineffective

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ways, often threatening the very survival of the organization. As we try to get things done that involve other groups, we often discover that they do not communicate with each other and that the level of conflict between groups in organizations and in the community is often astonishingly high.

As teachers, we encounter the sometimes mysterious phenom- enon that different classes behave completely differently from each other, even though our material and teaching style remains the same. As employees considering a new job, we realize that compa- nies differ greatly in their approach, even in the same industry and geographic locale. We feel these differences even as we walk through the doors of different organizations, such as restaurants, banks, stores, or airlines.

As members of different occupations, we are aware that being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, accountant, or other professional involves not only the learning of technical skills but also the adoption of cer- tain values and norms that define our occupation. If we violate some of these norms we can be thrown out of the occupation. But where do these come from and how do we reconcile the fact that each occupation considers its norms and values to be the correct ones?

The concept of culture helps to explain all of these phenomena and to normalize them. If we understand the dynamics of culture, we will be less likely to be puzzled, irritated, and anxious when we encounter the unfamiliar and seemingly irrational behavior of peo- ple in organizations, and we will have a deeper understanding not only of why various groups of people or organizations can be so dif- ferent, but also why it is so hard to change them. Even more impor- tant, if we understand culture better we will better understand ourselves—better understand the forces acting within us that define who we are, that reflect the groups with which we identify and to which we want to belong.

Culture and Leadership

When we examine culture and leadership closely, we see that they are two sides of the same coin; neither can really be understood by

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itself. On the one hand, cultural norms define how a given nation or organizations will define leadership—who will get promoted, who will get the attention of followers. On the other hand, it can be argued that the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture; that the unique talent of leaders is their ability to understand and work with culture; and that it is an ultimate act of leadership to destroy culture when it is viewed as dysfunctional.

If one wishes to distinguish leadership from management or administration, one can argue that leadership creates and changes cultures, while management and administration act within a cul- ture. By defining leadership in this manner, I am not implying that culture is easy to create or change, or that formal leaders are the only determiners of culture. On the contrary, as we will see, culture refers to those elements of a group or organization that are most sta- ble and least malleable.

Culture is the result of a complex group learning process that is only partially influenced by leader behavior. But if the group’s sur- vival is threatened because elements of its culture have become maladapted, it is ultimately the function of leadership at all levels of the organization to recognize and do something about this situa- tion. It is in this sense that leadership and culture are conceptually intertwined.

Toward a Formal Definition of Culture

When we apply the concept of culture to groups, organizations, and occupations, we are almost certain to have conceptual and seman- tic confusion, because such social units are themselves difficult to define unambiguously. I will use as the critical defining characteris- tic of a group the fact that its members have a shared history. Any social unit that has some kind of shared history will have evolved a culture, with the strength of that culture dependent on the length of its existence, the stability of the group’s membership, and the emotional intensity of the actual historical experiences they have shared. We all have a commonsense notion of this phenomenon,

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yet it is difficult to define it abstractly. In talking about organiza- tional culture with colleagues and members of organizations, I often find that we agree that “it” exists and that it is important in its effects, but when we try to define it, we have completely different ideas of what “it” is.

To make matters worse, the concept of culture has been the subject of considerable academic debate in the last twenty-five years and there are various approaches to defining and studying culture (for example, those of Hofstede, 1991; Trice and Beyer, 1993; Schultz, 1995; Deal and Kennedy, 1999; Cameron and Quinn, 1999; Ashkanasy, Wilderom, and Peterson, 2000; and Mar- tin, 2002). This debate is a healthy sign in that it testifies to the importance of culture as a concept, but at the same time it creates difficulties for both the scholar and the practitioner if definitions are fuzzy and usages are inconsistent. For the purpose of this intro- ductory chapter, I will give only a quick overview of this range of usage and then offer a precise and formal definition that makes the most sense from my point of view. Other usages and points of view will be further reviewed in later chapters.

Commonly used words relating to culture emphasize one of its critical aspects—the idea that certain things in groups are shared or held in common. The major categories of observables that are asso- ciated with culture in this sense are shown in Exhibit 1.1.

All of these concepts relate to culture or reflect culture in that they deal with things that group members share or hold in common, but none of them can usefully be thought of as “the culture” of an organization or group. If one asks why we need the word culture at

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Exhibit 1.1. Various Categories Used to Describe Culture.

Observed behavioral regularities when people interact: the language they use, the customs and traditions that evolve, and the rituals they employ in a wide variety of situations (Goffman, 1959, 1967; Jones, Moore, and Snyder, 1988; Trice and Beyer, 1993, 1985; Van Maanen, 1979b).

Group norms: the implicit standards and values that evolve in working groups, such as the particular norm of “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” that

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Exhibit 1.1. Various Categories Used to Describe Culture, Cont’d.

evolved among workers in the Bank Wiring Room in the Hawthorne studies (Homans, 1950; Kilmann and Saxton, 1983).

Espoused values: the articulated, publicly announced principles and values that the group claims to be trying to achieve, such as “product quality” or “price leadership” (Deal and Kennedy, 1982, 1999).

Formal philosophy: the broad policies and ideological principles that guide a group’s actions toward stockholders, employees, customers, and other stake- holders, such as the highly publicized “HP Way” of Hewlett-Packard (Ouchi, 1981; Pascale and Athos,1981; Packard, 1995).

Rules of the game: the implicit, unwritten rules for getting along in the orga- nization; “the ropes” that a newcomer must learn in order to become an accepted member; “the way we do things around here” (Schein, 1968, 1978; Van Maanen, 1979a, 1979b; Ritti and Funkhouser, 1987).

Climate: the feeling that is conveyed in a group by the physical layout and the way in which members of the organization interact with each other, with customers, or other outsiders (Ashkanasy, Wilderom, and Peterson, 2000; Schneider, 1990; Tagiuri and Litwin, 1968).

Embedded skills: the special competencies displayed by group members in accomplishing certain tasks, the ability to make certain things that gets passed on from generation to generation without necessarily being articulated in writ- ing (Argyris and Schön, 1978; Cook and Yanow, 1993; Henderson and Clark, 1990; Peters and Waterman, 1982).

Habits of thinking, mental models, and linguistic paradigms: the shared cogni- tive frames that guide the perceptions, thought, and language used by the mem- bers of a group and taught to new members in the early socialization process (Douglas, 1986; Hofstede, 2001; Van Maanen, 1979b; Senge and others, 1994).

Shared meanings: the emergent understandings created by group members as they interact with each other (as in Geertz, 1973; Smircich, 1983; Van Maanen and Barley, 1984; Weick, 1995).

“Root metaphors” or integrating symbols: the ways in which groups evolve to characterize themselves, which may or may not be appreciated consciously but become embodied in buildings, office layout, and other material artifacts of the group. This level of the culture reflects the emotional and aesthetic response of members as contrasted with the cognitive or evaluative response (as in Gagliardi, 1990; Hatch, 1990; Pondy, Frost, Morgan, and Dandridge, 1983; Schultz, 1995).

Formal rituals and celebrations: the ways in which a group celebrates key events that reflect important values or important “passages” by members, such as promotion, completion of important projects, and milestones (as in Deal and Kennedy, 1982, 1999; Trice and Beyer, 1993).

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all when we have so many other concepts—such as norms, values, behavior patterns, rituals, traditions, and so on—one recognizes that the word culture adds several other critical elements to the con- cept of sharing: structural stability, depth, breadth, and patterning or integration.

Structural Stability

Culture implies some level of structural stability in the group. When we say that something is “cultural,” we imply that it is not only shared, but also stable, because it defines the group. Once we achieve a sense of group identity, it is our major stabilizing force and will not be given up easily. Culture survives even when some members of the organization depart. Culture is hard to change because group members value stability in that it provides meaning and predictability.

Depth

Culture is the deepest, often unconscious part of a group and is, therefore, less tangible and less visible than other parts. From this point of view, most of the concepts reviewed above can be thought of as manifestations of culture, but they are not the essence of what we mean by culture. Note that when something is more deeply embedded it also gains stability.

Breadth

A third characteristic of culture is that once it has developed, it covers all of a group’s functioning. Culture is pervasive; it influences all aspects of how an organization deals with its primary task, its var- ious environments, and its internal operations. Not all groups have cultures in this sense, but the concept connotes that when we refer to the culture of a group we are referring to all of its operations.

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Patterning or Integration

The fourth characteristic that is implied by the concept of culture and that further lends stability is patterning or integration of the elements into a larger paradigm or “gestalt” that ties together the various elements and that lies at a deeper level. Culture somehow implies that rituals, climate, values, and behaviors tie together into a coherent whole; this patterning or integration is the essence of what we mean by “culture.” Such patterning or integration ulti- mately derives from the human need to make our environment as sensible and orderly as we can (Weick, 1995). Disorder or sense- lessness makes us anxious, so we will work hard to reduce that anx- iety by developing a more consistent and predictable view of how things are and how they should be. Thus “organizational cultures, like other cultures, develop as groups of people struggle to make sense of and cope with their worlds” (Trice and Beyer, 1993, p. 4).

How then should we think about the “essence” of culture and how should we formally define it? The most useful way to arrive at a definition of something as abstract as culture is to think in dynamic evolutionary terms. If we can understand where culture comes from and how it evolves, then we can grasp something that is abstract; that exists in a group’s unconscious, yet that has power- ful influences on a group’s behavior.

How Does Culture Form?

Culture forms in two ways. In Chapter Four I will show how spon- taneous interaction in an unstructured group gradually lead to patterns and norms of behavior that become the culture of that group—often within just hours of the group’s formation. In more formal groups an individual creates the group or becomes its leader. This could be an entrepreneur starting a new company, a religious person creating a following, a political leader creating a new party, a teacher starting a new class, or a manager taking over a new department of an organization. The individual founder—whether

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an entrepreneur or just the convener of a new group—will have certain personal visions, goals, beliefs, values, and assumptions about how things should be. He or she will initially impose these on the group and/or select members on the basis of their similarity of thoughts and values.

We can think of this imposition as a primary act of leadership, but it does not automatically produce culture. All it produces is compliance in the followers to do what the leader asks of them. Only if the resulting behavior leads to “success”—in the sense that the group accomplishes its task and the members feel good about their relationships to each other—will the founder’s beliefs and val- ues be confirmed and reinforced, and, most important, come to be recognized as shared. What was originally the founder’s individual view of the world leads to shared action, which, if successful, leads to a shared recognition that the founder “had it right.” The group will then act again on these beliefs and values and, if it continues to be successful, will eventually conclude that it now has the “cor- rect” way to think, feel, and act.

If, on the other hand, the founder’s beliefs and values do not lead to success, the group will fail and disappear or will seek other leader- ship until someone is found whose beliefs and values will lead to suc- cess. The culture formation process will then revolve around that new leader. With continued reinforcement, the group will become less and less conscious of these beliefs and values, and it will begin to treat them more and more as nonnegotiable assumptions. As this process continues, these assumptions will gradually drop out of awareness and come to be taken for granted. As assumptions come to be taken for granted they become part of the identity of the group; are taught to newcomers as the way to think, feel, and act; and, if violated, produce discomfort, anxiety, ostracism, and eventually excommunication. This concept of assumptions, as opposed to beliefs and values, implies nonnegotiability. If we are willing to argue about something, then it has not become taken for granted. Therefore, def- initions of culture that deal with values must specify that culture con- sists of nonnegotiable values—which I am calling assumptions.

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In summary, we can think of culture as the accumulated shared learning of a given group, covering behavioral, emotional, and cog- nitive elements of the group members’ total psychological func- tioning. For such shared learning to occur, there must be a history of shared experience that, in turn, implies some stability of mem- bership in the group. Given such stability and a shared history, the human need for stability, consistency, and meaning will cause the various shared elements to form into patterns that eventually can be called a culture.

Culture Formally Defined

The culture of a group can now be defined as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of exter- nal adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.

I am not arguing that all groups evolve integrated cultures in this sense. We all know of groups, organizations, and societies in which certain beliefs and values work at cross purposes with other beliefs and values, leading to situations full of conflict and ambigu- ity (Martin, 2002). This may result from insufficient stability of membership, insufficient shared history of experience, or the pres- ence of many subgroups with different kinds of shared experiences. Ambiguity and conflict also result from the fact that each of us belongs to many groups, so that what we bring to any given group is influenced by the assumptions that are appropriate to our other groups.

But if the concept of culture is to have any utility, it should draw our attention to those things that are the product of our human need for stability, consistency, and meaning. Culture for- mation is always, by definition, a striving toward patterning and integration, even though in many groups their actual history of experiences prevents them from ever achieving a clear-cut, unam- biguous paradigm.

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If a group’s culture is the result of that group’s accumulated learning, how do we describe and catalogue the content of that learning? All group and organizational theories distinguish two major sets of problems that all groups, no matter what their size, must deal with: (1) survival, growth, and adaptation in their envi- ronment; and (2) internal integration that permits daily function- ing and the ability to adapt and learn. Both of these areas of group functioning will reflect the larger cultural context in which the group exists and from which are derived broader and deeper basic assumptions about the nature of reality, time, space, human nature, and human relationships. Each of these areas will be explained in detail in later chapters.

At this point, it is important to discuss several other elements that are important to our formal definition of culture.

The Process of Socialization

Once a group has a culture, it will pass elements of this culture on to new generations of group members (Louis, 1980; Schein, 1968; Van Maanen, 1976; Van Maanen and Schein, 1979). Studying what new members of groups are taught is, in fact, a good way to discover some of the elements of a culture; however, by this means one only learns about surface aspects of the culture—especially because much of what is at the heart of a culture will not be revealed in the rules of behavior taught to newcomers. It will only be revealed to members as they gain permanent status and are allowed into the inner circles of the group in which group secrets are shared.

On the other hand, how one learns and the socialization pro- cesses to which one is subjected may indeed reveal deeper assump- tions. To get at those deeper levels one must try to understand the perceptions and feelings that arise in critical situations, and one must observe and interview regular members or “old-timers” to get an accurate sense of the deeper-level assumptions that are shared.

Can culture be learned through anticipatory socialization or self-socialization? Can new members discover for themselves what

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the basic assumptions are? Yes and no. We certainly know that one of the major activities of any new member when she enters a new group is to decipher the operating norms and assumptions. But this deciphering can be successful only through the feedback that is meted out by old members to new members as they experiment with different kinds of behavior. In this sense, there is always a teaching process going on, even though it may be quite implicit and unsystematic.

If the group does not have shared assumptions, as will some- times be the case, the new member’s interaction with old members will be a more creative process of building a culture. But once shared assumptions exist, the culture survives through teaching them to newcomers. In this regard culture is a mechanism of social control and can be the basis for explicitly manipulating members into perceiving, thinking, and feeling in certain ways (Van Maanen and Kunda, 1989; Kunda, 1992; Schein, 1968). Whether or not we approve of this as a mechanism of social control is a separate ques- tion that will be addressed later.

Behavior Is Derivative, Not Central

This formal definition of culture does not include overt behavior patterns (although some such behavior—particularly formal ritu- als—does reflect cultural assumptions). Instead, it emphasizes that the critical assumptions deal with how we perceive, think about, and feel about things. Overt behavior is always determined both by the cultural predisposition (the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that are patterned) and by the situational contingencies that arise from the immediate external environment.

Behavioral regularities can occur for reasons other than shared culture. For example, if we observe that all members of a group cower in the presence of a large, loud leader, this could be based on biological, reflex reactions to sound and size, or on individual or shared learning. Such a behavioral regularity should not, therefore, be the basis for defining culture—though we might later discover

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that, in a given group’s experience, cowering is indeed a result of shared learning and, therefore, a manifestation of deeper shared assumptions. To put it another way, when we observe behavior reg- ularities, we do not know whether or not we are dealing with a cul- tural manifestation. Only after we have discovered the deeper layers that I define as the essence of culture can we specify what is and what is not an artifact that reflects the culture.

Can a Large Organization or Occupation Have One Culture?

My formal definition does not specify the size of social unit to which it can legitimately be applied. Our experience with large organiza- tions tells us that at a certain size the variations among the sub- groups is substantial, suggesting that it might not be appropriate to talk of the culture of an IBM or a General Motors or Shell. In the evolution of DEC over its thirty-five-year history one can see both a strong overall corporate culture and the growth of powerful sub- cultures that reflected the larger culture but also differed in impor- tant ways (Schein, 2003). In fact, the growing tensions among the subcultures were partly the reason why DEC as an economic entity ultimately failed to survive.

Do Occupations Have Cultures?

If an occupation involves an intense period of education and apprenticeship, there will certainly be a shared learning of attitudes, norms, and values that eventually will become taken-for-granted assumptions for the members of those occupations. It is assumed that the beliefs and values learned during this time will remain sta- ble as assumptions even though the person may not always be in a group of occupational peers. But reinforcement of those assump- tions occurs at professional meetings and continuing education ses- sions, and by virtue of the fact that the practice of the occupation often calls for teamwork among several members of the occupation,

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who reinforce each other. One reason why so many occupations rely heavily on peer-group evaluation is that this process preserves and protects the culture of the occupation.

Determining which sets of assumptions apply to a whole society, or a whole organization, or a whole subgroup within an organization or occupation, should be done empirically. I have found all kinds of combinations; their existence is one reason why some theorists emphasize that organizational cultures can be integrated, differenti- ated, or fragmented (Martin, 2002). But for the purpose of defining culture, it is important to recognize that a fragmented or differenti- ated organizational culture usually reflects a multiplicity of subcul- tures, and within those subcultures there are shared assumptions.

Are Some Assumptions More Important than Others?

As we will see when we examine some of our cases more closely, organizations do seem to function primarily in terms of some core of assumptions, some smaller set that can be thought of as the cul- tural paradigm or the governing assumptions, or as critical “genes” in the “cultural DNA.” For the researcher, the problem is that dif- ferent organizations will have different paradigms with different core assumptions. As a result, cultural typologies can be very mis- leading. One could measure many organizations on the same core dimensions, but in some of those organizations a particular dimen- sion could be central to the paradigm, whereas in others its influ- ence on the organization’s behavior could be quite peripheral.

If the total set of shared basic assumptions of a given organiza- tional culture can be thought of as its DNA, then we can examine some of the individual genes in terms of their centrality or potency in forcing certain kinds of growth and behavior, and other genes in terms of their power to inhibit or prevent certain kinds of behavior. We can then see that certain kinds of cultural evolution are deter- mined by the “genetic structure,” the kind of “autoimmune system” that the organization generates, and the impact of “mutations and hybridization.”

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Summary and Conclusions

In this chapter I introduced the concept of culture and have argued that it helps to explain some of the more seemingly incomprehen- sible and irrational aspects of what goes on in groups and organiza- tions. The variety of elements that people perceive to be “culture” was reviewed, leading to a formal definition that puts the emphasis on shared learning experiences that lead, in turn, to shared, taken- for-granted basic assumptions held by the members of the group or organization.

It follows that any group with a stable membership and a history of shared learning will have developed some level of culture, but a group that has had either considerable turnover of members and leaders or a history lacking in any kind of challenging events may well lack any shared assumptions. Not every collection of people develops a culture; in fact, we tend to use the term group rather than, say, crowd or collection of people only when there has been enough of a shared history for some degree of culture formation to have taken place.

Once a set of shared assumptions has come to be taken for granted, it determines much of the group’s behavior, and the rules and norms are taught to newcomers in a socialization process that is itself a reflection of culture. To define culture one must go below the behavioral level, because behavioral regularities can be caused by forces other than culture. Even large organizations and entire occupations can have a common culture if there has been enough of a history of shared experience. Finally, I noted that the shared assumptions will form a paradigm, with more or less central or gov- erning assumptions driving the system, much as certain genes drive the genetic structure of human DNA.

Culture and leadership are two sides of the same coin, in that leaders first create cultures when they create groups and organiza- tions. Once cultures exist they determine the criteria for leadership and thus determine who will or will not be a leader. But if elements of a culture become dysfunctional, it is the unique function of lead-

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ership to be able to perceive the functional and dysfunctional ele- ments of the existing culture and to manage cultural evolution and change in such a way that the group can survive in a changing envi- ronment.

The bottom line for leaders is that if they do not become con- scious of the cultures in which they are embedded, those cultures will manage them. Cultural understanding is desirable for all of us, but it is essential to leaders if they are to lead.

A final note: from this point on I will use the term group to refer to social units of all sizes—including organizations and subunits of organizations—except when it is necessary to distinguish the type of social unit because of subgroups that exist within larger groups.

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2

T H E L E V E L S O F C U LT U R E

The purpose of this chapter is to show that culture can be analyzed at several different levels, with the term level meaning the degree to which the cultural phenomenon is visible to the observer. Some of the confusion surrounding the definition of what culture really is results from not differentiating the levels at which it manifests itself. These levels range from the very tangible overt manifestations that one can see and feel to the deeply embedded, unconscious, basic assumptions that I am defining as the essence of culture. 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.

Many other culture researchers prefer the term basic values to describe the concept of the deepest levels. I prefer basic assumptions because these tend to be taken for granted by group members and are treated as nonnegotiable. Values are open to discussion and peo- ple can agree to disagree about them. Basic assumptions are so taken for granted that someone who does not hold them is viewed as a “foreigner” or as “crazy” and is automatically dismissed.

The major levels of cultural analysis are shown in Figure 2.1.

Artifacts

At the surface is the level of artifacts, which includes all the phe- nomena that one sees, hears, and feels when one encounters a new group with an unfamiliar culture. Artifacts include the visible products of the group, such as the architecture of its physical

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environment; its language; its technology and products; its artistic creations; its style, as embodied in clothing, manners of address, emotional displays, and myths and stories told about the organiza- tion; its published lists of values; its observable rituals and cere- monies; and so on.

The “climate” of the group is an artifact of the deeper cultural levels, as is the visible behavior of its members. Artifacts also include, for purposes of cultural analysis, the organizational pro- cesses by which such behavior is made routine, and structural ele- ments such as charters, formal descriptions of how the organization works, and organization charts.

The most important point to be made about this level of the cul- ture 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 recon-

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Figure 2.1. Levels of Culture.

Strategies, goals, philosophies (espoused justifications)

Unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. . . (ultimate source of values and action)

Underlying Assumptions

Espoused Beliefs and Values

Visible organizational structures and processes (hard to decipher)

Artifacts

Copyright © E. H. Schein. Not to be reproduced without permission of author.

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struct from that alone what those things mean in the given group, or whether they even reflect important underlying assumptions.

On the other hand, one school of thought argues that one’s own response to physical artifacts such as buildings and office layouts can lead to the identification of major images and root metaphors that reflect the deepest level of the culture (Gagliardi, 1990). This kind of immediate insight would be especially relevant if the organiza- tion one is experiencing is in the same larger culture as the re- searcher. The problem is that symbols are ambiguous, and one can only test one’s insight into what something may mean if one has also experienced the culture at the deeper levels of values and assumptions.

It is especially dangerous to try to infer the deeper assumptions from artifacts alone, because one’s interpretations will inevitably be projections of one’s own feelings and reactions. For example, when one sees a very informal, loose organization, one may interpret that as inefficient if one’s own background is based on the assumption that informality means playing around and not working. Or, alter- natively, if one sees a very formal organization, one may interpret that to be a sign of lack of innovative capacity, if one’s own experi- ence is based on the assumption that formality means bureaucracy and formalization.

Every facet of a group’s life produces artifacts, creating the prob- lem of classification. In reading cultural descriptions, one often notes that different observers choose to report on different sorts of artifacts, leading to noncomparable descriptions. Anthropologists have developed classification systems, but these tend to be so vast and detailed that cultural essence becomes difficult to discern.

If the observer lives in the group long enough, the meanings of artifacts gradually become clear. If, however, one wants to achieve this level of understanding more quickly, one can attempt to ana- lyze the espoused values, norms, and rules that provide the day-to- day operating principles by which the members of the group guide their behavior. This kind of inquiry takes us to the next level of cul- tural analysis.

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Espoused Beliefs and Values

All group learning ultimately reflects someone’s original beliefs and values, their 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 indi- vidual’s own assumptions about what is right or wrong, what will work or 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 pro- posed will only be perceived as what the leader wants. Until the group has taken some joint action and together observed the out- come of that action, there is not as yet a shared basis for determin- ing whether what the leader wants will turn out to be valid.

For example, in a young business, if sales begin to decline a man- ager 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 state- ment of that manager’s beliefs and values: “She believes that when one is in 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 if the solution works, and if the group has a shared perception of that success, then the perceived value that advertising is good gradually becomes transformed: first into a shared value or belief, and ulti- mately into a shared assumption (if actions based on it continue to be successful). If this transformation process occurs, group members will tend to 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 con-

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tinue to work reliably in solving the group’s problems will become transformed into assumptions. Second, certain value domains— those dealing with the less controllable elements of the environ- ment 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.

By social validation I mean that certain 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. Such beliefs and values typically involve the group’s internal rela- tions; the test of whether they work or not is how comfortable and anxiety-free members are when they abide by them. Social valida- tion also applies to those broader values that are not testable, such as ethics and aesthetics.

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. And, as they continue to work, they gradually become transformed into nondiscussible assumptions supported by articu- lated sets of beliefs, norms, and operational rules of behavior. The derived beliefs and moral and ethical rules remain conscious and are explicitly articulated because they serve the normative or moral function of guiding members of the group in how to deal with cer- tain key situations, and in training new members how to behave. A set of beliefs and values that become embodied in an ideology or organizational philosophy thus can serve as a guide and as a way of dealing with the uncertainty of intrinsically uncontrollable or diffi- cult events. An example of such an ideology is Hewlett-Packard’s The HP Way (Packard, 1995).

Beliefs and values at this conscious level will predict much of the behavior that can be observed at the artifacts level. But if those beliefs and values are not based on prior learning, they may also

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reflect only what Argyris and Schön (1978) have called “espoused theories,” which predict well enough what people will say in a vari- ety of situations but which may be out of line with what they will actually do in situations in which those beliefs and values should, in fact, be operating. Thus, a company may say that it values people and that it has high quality standards for its products, but its record in that regard may contradict what it says.

If the espoused beliefs and values are reasonably congruent with the underlying assumptions, then the articulation of those values into a philosophy of operating can be helpful in bringing the group together, serving as a source of identity and core mission. But in analyzing beliefs and values one must discriminate carefully be- tween those that are congruent with underlying assumptions and those that are, in effect, either rationalizations or only aspirations for the future. Often such lists of 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 cus- tomers, 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 culture as such 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 underlying assumptions.

Basic Underlying 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 assump- tions, in this sense, are different from what some anthropologists called “dominant value orientations” in that such dominant orien- tations reflect the preferred solution among several basic alterna- tives, but all the alternatives are still visible in the culture, and any

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given member of the culture could, from time to time, behave ac- cording to variant as well as dominant orientations (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, 1961).

Basic assumptions, in the sense in which I want to define that concept, have become so taken for granted that one finds little vari- ation within a social unit. This degree of consensus results from repeated success in implementing certain beliefs and values, as pre- viously described. In fact, if a basic assumption comes to be strongly held in a group, members will find behavior based on any other premise inconceivable. For example, a group whose basic assump- tion is that the individual’s rights supersede those of the group mem- bers would find it inconceivable that members would commit suicide or in some other way sacrifice themselves to the group even if they had dishonored the group. In a capitalist country, it is inconceivable that one might design a company to operate consistently at a finan- cial loss, or that it does not matter whether or not a product works. In an occupation such as engineering, it would be 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 has 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 (Argyris, 1976; Argyris and Schön, 1974).

Basic assumptions, like theories-in-use, tend to be noncon- frontable and nondebatable, and hence are extremely difficult to change. To learn something new in this realm requires us to resur- rect, reexamine, and possibly change some of the more stable por- tions of our cognitive structure—a process that Argyris and others have called “double-loop learning,” or “frame breaking” (Argyris et al., 1985; Bartunek, 1984). Such learning is intrinsically difficult because the reexamination of basic assumptions temporarily desta- bilizes our cognitive and interpersonal world, releasing large quan- tities of basic anxiety.

Rather than tolerating such anxiety levels, we tend to want to perceive the events around us as congruent with our assumptions,

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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. Once we have developed an integrated set of such assumptions—a “thought world” or “mental map”—we will be maximally comfortable with others who share the same set of assumptions and very uncomfort- able and vulnerable in situations where different assumptions oper- ate, because either we will not understand what is going on, or, worse, we will misperceive and misinterpret the actions of others (Douglas, 1986).

The human mind needs cognitive stability; therefore, any chal- lenge or questioning of a basic assumption will release anxiety and defensiveness. In this sense, the shared basic assumptions that make up the culture of a group can be thought of at both the individual and the group level as psychological cognitive defense mechanisms that permit the group to continue to function. Recognizing this con- nection is important when one thinks about changing aspects of a group’s culture, for it is no easier to do that than to change an indi- vidual’s pattern of defense mechanisms. As was pointed out in Chap- ter One, we can also think of culture at this level as the group’s DNA, so if new learning or growth is required, the genes have to be there to make such growth possible and the autoimmune system has to be neutralized to sustain new growth. In any case, the two keys to successful culture change are (1) the management of the large amounts of anxiety that accompany any relearning at this level and (2) the assessment of whether the genetic potential for the new learning is even present.

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

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that coincides with those expectations. We observe people sitting in a seemingly idle posture at their desk and interpret their behav- ior as “loafing” rather than “thinking out an important problem.” We 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 dis- cuss 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 fig- ure 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 someone is discovered to be unproductive in such an organiza- tion, 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 the employee wants to work at home, we will per- ceive that as evidence of his wanting to be productive even if cir- cumstances required him to be at home.

In both cases there is the potential for distortion, in that the cyn- ical 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 who are taking advan- tage of the situation. As McGregor noted many decades ago, such assumptions about “human nature” become the basis of manage- ment and control systems that perpetuate themselves because if peo- ple are treated consistently in terms of certain basic assumptions, they come eventually to behave according to those assumptions in order to make their world stable and predictable (McGregor, 1960).

Unconscious assumptions sometimes lead to ridiculously tragic situations, as illustrated by a common problem experienced by American supervisors in some Asian countries. A manager who comes from an American pragmatic tradition assumes and takes it

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for granted that solving a problem always has the highest priority. When that manager encounters a subordinate who comes from a different cultural tradition, in which good relationships and pro- tecting the superior’s “face” are assumed to have top priority, the fol- lowing scenario has often resulted.

The manager proposes a solution to a given problem. The sub- ordinate 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, to even reassure the boss that they should go ahead and take the action.

The action is taken, the results are negative, and the boss, somewhat surprised and puzzled, asks the subordinate what he would have done. When the subordinate reports that he would have done something different, the boss quite legitimately asks why the subordinate did not speak up sooner. This question puts the sub- ordinate 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 it 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 there- fore must be gotten rid of. It never occurs to the boss that another assumption—such as “one never embarrasses a superior”—is oper- ating, and that, to the subordinate, that assumption is even more powerful than “one gets the job done.”

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If assumptions such as these operate only in an individual and represent her idiosyncratic experience, they can be corrected more easily because the person will detect that 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 rein- forced. In these instances probably only a third party or some cross- cultural education could help to find common ground whereby both parties could bring their implicit assumptions to the surface. And even after they have surfaced, such assumptions would still operate, forcing the boss and the subordinate to invent a whole new com- munication mechanism that would permit each to remain congru- ent with his or her culture—for example, agreeing that, before any decision is made and before the boss has stuck his neck out, the sub- ordinate 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. One cannot in these instances simply declare one or the other cultural assumption “wrong.” One has to find a third assumption to allow them both to retain their integrity.

I have dwelled on this long example to illustrate the potency of implicit, unconscious assumptions and to show that such assump- tions often deal with fundamental aspects of life—the nature of time and space, human nature and human activities, the nature of truth and how one discovers it, the correct way for the individual and the group to relate to each other, the relative importance of work, fam- ily, and self-development, the proper role of men and women, and the nature of the family. These assumptions form the core cultural content as will be discussed in Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine.

We do not develop new assumptions about each of these areas in every group or organization we join. Members of any new group will bring their own cultural learning from prior groups, from their education, and from their socialization into occupational commu- nities, but as the new group develops its own shared history, it will develop modified or brand-new assumptions in critical areas of its experience. It is those new assumptions that make up the culture of that particular group.

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Any group’s culture can be studied at these three levels—the level of its artifacts, the level of its espoused beliefs and values, and the level of its basic underlying assumptions. If one does not deci- pher the pattern of basic assumptions that may be operating, one will not know how to interpret the artifacts correctly or how much credence to give to the articulated values. In other words, the es- sence of a culture lies in the pattern of basic underlying assump- tions, and once one understands those, one can easily understand the other more surface levels and deal appropriately with them.

Summary and Conclusions

Though the essence of a group’s culture is its pattern of shared, basic taken-for-granted assumptions, the culture will manifest itself at the level of observable artifacts and shared espoused beliefs and values. In analyzing cultures, it is important to recognize that artifacts are easy to observe but difficult to decipher and that espoused beliefs and values may only reflect rationalizations or aspirations. To understand a group’s culture, one must attempt to get at its shared basic assump- tions and one must understand the learning process by which such basic assumptions come to be.

Leadership is originally the source of the beliefs and values that get a group moving in dealing with its internal and external prob- lems. If what leaders propose works, and continues to work, what once were only the leader’s assumptions gradually come to be shared assumptions. Once a set of shared basic assumptions is formed by this process, it can function as a cognitive defense mechanism both for the individual members and for the group as a whole. In other words, individuals and groups seek stability and meaning. Once achieved, it is easier to distort new data by denial, projection, ra- tionalization, or various other defense mechanisms than to change the basic assumption. As we will see, culture change, in the sense of changing basic assumptions is, therefore, difficult, time-con- suming, and highly anxiety-provoking—a point that is especially

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relevant for the leader who sets out to change the culture of the organization.

The most central issue for leaders, therefore, is how to get at the deeper levels of a culture, how to assess the functionality of the assumptions made at that level, and how to deal with the anxiety that is unleashed when those levels are challenged.

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