Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The bottom line for leaders is that if they do not become conscious of the cultures in which they are embedded, those cultures will manage them. The major levels of cultural analysis are Artifacts, Espoused Beliefs and Values, and Basic Underlying Assumptions. Basic assumptions tend to be taken for granted by group members and are treated as nonnegotiable. Values are open to discussion and people can agree to disagree about them. Though the essence of a groups culture is its pattern of shared, basic taken-forgranted assumptions, the culture will manifest itself at the level of observable artifacts and shared espoused beliefs and values. To understand a groups culture, one must attempt to get at its shared basic assumptions and one must understand the learning process by which such basic assumptions come to be. 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 reect rationalizations or aspirations. It is dangerous to try to infer the deeper assumptions from artifacts alone, because ones interpretations will inevitably be projections of ones own feelings and reactions. Certain values are conrmed only by the shared social experience of a group. Such beliefs and values typically involve the groups internal relations; the test of whether they work or not is how comfortable and anxiety-free members are when they abide by them. 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. The most central issue for leaders 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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