Schein, E. (1996). "Culture: The Missing Concept in Organization Studies." Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(2): 229-240.

Mintzberg emphasizes the culture need to be observed, more then measured, if organizational studies is to advance. The failure to understand culture stems from our methods of inquiry.

Much of the early work was based on an individual perspective, and we just anthropomorphized an individual onto an organization. Likewise, the organizational sociologists made no reference of the organizational psychologists either.

We tended to promote "human relations" type behavior, not counting the fact that in the short-run autocratic styles are just as productive, and then wondered why managers often were so autocratic. We focused on charasmatic leadership and became prescriptive, rather than understand what managers did on a day-to-day basis. We acknowledged the existence of group norms but failed to recognize occupational and societal norms that spanned organizations. We told managers to change cultures when they were more likely to be changed by them instead.

What is most missing in our research is "anchoring our concepts to observed reality" and instead focused on formal elegant abstractions (centralization, differentiation-integration, etc.). We began to treat abstractions like questionnaires as reality.

He uses the example of POW brainwashing techniques in Korea to show that it wasn't the harsh living in camps that made them change, it was immersion in a "culture" created and sustained by the interragators, guards, and citizens that opened up the mind of the prisoner.

Organizations are also a reflection of the many occupational communities from which they are comprised (Van Maanen & Barley).

"Learning is, however, a basically individualistic concept drawn directly from psychology, where it is highly developed, and we have not yet settled on a good definition of what it might mean for an organization to learn".

"The members of a culture are not even aware of their own culture until they encounter a different one".

Three Cultures of Management

The "operators" that make and deliver the basic products and services that fulfill the organization's basic mission. We have good ideas of how to make them more efficient, effective, and innovative, and most change programs target these people. Developing managers is typically conceived as teaching people to manage operators of the organization.

The "engineers" monitor and design the core technology and share a common occupational culture. One discovers that their peferred solutions are "solutions without people. They prefer systems, machines, routines, and rules that are automatic and totally reliable", and ignore the social realities of the workplace.

"Engineers tend to view the need for complex human teams, the need to build relationships and trust, and the need to elicit the commitment of employees as unfortunate and undesirable derivatives of "human nature" to be circumvented, if possible, because they are so hard to manage and control".

The resolution or tension between operators or engineers often results in proposals for new machines or training programs.

The "executives" have a financial accountability to the shareholders, and strive to keep stock price and dividends as high as possible. Reality is driven by capital markets. They learn that to manage means to use reward and control systems. "Though they may have grown up with the knowledge and insights of the 'operators", they increasingly have to abandon their insights ahd replace them with perceptions that in a tough competitive world, compromises have to be made, chances have to be taken, and financial criteria always have to be treated as paramount".

Executives, in distancing themselves from the organization, tend to collude with engineers to minimize the 'human factor".

However, as researchers "we spend our time advocating that "they" should become more aware of the human factor, which is tantamount to saying give up your culture and become a member of ours."