Corporate Culture Case Study

Part one: Corporate culture

1.1 Overview

Corporate culture is considered a relatively new field of study in business. Management scholars started paying attention to the concept in the 1980s. Moreover, one of the first papers about the subject was published by Andrew M. Pettigrew in 1979 under the title “On studying organizational cultures” (Pettigrew, 1979). Further investigation of the subject followed by Ouchi (1981), Pascale and Athos (1981), Deal and Kennedy (1985), Sathe (1985), or Denison (1990). However, the accomplishments of an MIT professor under the name of Edgar Schein introduced more complexity and sophistication to the study field. He established the conceptual framework of how culture operates with in the organization by introducing the three levels of culture and the three stages model of learning (Montaña, 2011). E. Schein defines corporate culture as “a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external 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” (Schein 2012, p. 235).

1.2

In order to manage the culture, it’s essential to understand the three levels and how deep they go in the organization. Furthermore, the three levels of culture move from what is visible to what is