ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

26 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIPFigure 2.1. Levels of Culture.ArtifactsVisible organizationalstructures and processes(hard to decipher)Espoused Beliefsand ValuesStrategies, goals,philosophies(espoused justifications)UnderlyingAssumptionsUnconscious, taken-for-grantedbeliefs, perceptions, thoughts,and feelings. . .(ultimate source of values andaction)Copyright © E. H. Schein. Not to be reproduced without permission of author.environment; its language; its technology and products; its artisticcreations; its style, as embodied in clothing, manners of address,emotional displays, and myths and stories told about the organization;its published lists of values; its observable rituals and ceremonies;and so on.The “climate” of the group is an artifact of the deeper culturallevels, as is the visible behavior of its members. Artifacts alsoinclude, for purposes of cultural analysis, the organizational processesby which such behavior is made routine, and structural elementssuch as charters, formal descriptions of how the organizationworks, and organization charts.The most important point to be made about this level of the cultureis 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-