Culture Levels - Revision history

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 As the continuation of successful action (Baecker, 1999), culture shows the materialized "information processing" of a social system. Culture provides the structure in which action is possible, and as such reduces complexity to a degree that is manageable for the system (Luhmann,1984; Baecker,1999). But structure is virtual (Giddens, 1984) and only becomes visible through social norms and actions.
-According to Edgar Schein (2010, 2015), organizations consist of '''three levels of culture''':
+In the 1980s, psychologist Edgar Schein of the Sloan School of Management developed a model for understanding and analyzing organizational culture. Schein divided an '''organization’s culture into three distinct levels''': artifacts, values, and assumptions.
-*Artifacts: The first level, artifacts, constitutes the visible structures and processes as well as observed behavior.
+*Artifacts are the overt and obvious elements of an organization. They’re typically the things even an outsider can see, such as furniture and office layout, dress norms, inside jokes, and mantras. Yes, foosball and free food are also artifacts. Artifacts can be easy to observe but sometimes difficult to understand, especially if your analysis of a culture never goes any deeper. The Palo Alto office of IDEO famously has an airplane wing jutting out from one wall, a surprising and puzzling artifact if one doesn’t understand IDEO’s culture of playful experimentation and free expression.
-*Espoused Beliefs: The second level, espoused beliefs and values, includes amongst others ideals, ideologies and rationalizations.
+*Espoused values are the company’s declared set of values and norms. Values affect how members interact and represent the organization. Most often, values are reinforced in public declarations, like the aptly named list of core values, but also in the common phrases and norms individuals repeat often. Herb Kelleher was famous for responding to a variety of proposals from Southwest colleagues with the phrase “low cost airline,” reaffirming the espoused value of affordability.
-*Values and Basic Underlying Assumptions: The third level, basic underlying assumptions, comprises of unconscious beliefs and values. This level is more difficult to analyze, but essential to understand the emergence of organizational culture: "In other words, the essence of a culture lies in the
+*Shared basic assumptions are the bedrock of organizational culture. They are the beliefs and behaviors so deeply embedded that they can sometimes go unnoticed. But basic assumptions are the essence of culture, and the plumb line that espoused values and artifacts square themselves against. Zappos call center employees share a strong belief that providing outstanding service will result in loyal customers, so much so that employees send potential customers to other retailers if Zappos doesn’t have the item in stock. Basic assumptions manifest themselves in a variety of ways. Sometimes they’re reflected in the espoused values and in artifacts, sometimes not. But when basic organizational assumptions don’t align with espoused values, trouble arises. Enron produced a 64-page manual outlining the company’s mission and espousing its core values, but judging by their very “creative” accounting practices, it’s questionable if the executives at the top had ever read it.<ref>Edgar Schein's Three Levels of Culture [https://hbr.org/2014/12/how-to-tell-if-your-company-has-a-creative-culture Harvard Business Review]</ref>
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 [[File:Levels of Culture Interaction.png|400px|Levels of Culture and their Interaction]]
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 ===References===

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	In his 1984 article 'Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture', Schein defines Organizational culture as "the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, and 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."		In his 1984 article 'Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture', Schein defines Organizational culture as "the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, and 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."
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		+	Schein's view of culture on these three levels has been described as “one of the only conceptual models ever offered” (Hatch, 1993, p. 658). Schein’s (1985) model of culture emphasizes distinguishable categories of organizational culture which have commonly become known as the three
		+	components of organizational culture (Ott, 1989). Schein’s (1985) conceptualization of culture is shown in the Figure below.
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		+	[[File:Levels of Culture Interaction.png\|400px\|Levels of Culture and their Interaction]]

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 As the continuation of successful action (Baecker, 1999), culture shows the materialized "information processing" of a social system. Culture provides the structure in which action is possible, and as such reduces complexity to a degree that is manageable for the system (Luhmann,1984; Baecker,1999). But structure is virtual (Giddens, 1984) and only becomes visible through social norms and actions.
-According to Schein (2010, 2015), organizations consist of '''three levels of culture''':
+According to Edgar Schein (2010, 2015), organizations consist of '''three levels of culture''':
 *Artifacts: The first level, artifacts, constitutes the visible structures and processes as well as observed behavior.
 *Espoused Beliefs: The second level, espoused beliefs and values, includes amongst others ideals, ideologies and rationalizations.
 *Values and Basic Underlying Assumptions: The third level, basic underlying assumptions, comprises of unconscious beliefs and values. This level is more difficult to analyze, but essential to understand the emergence of organizational culture: "In other words, the essence of a culture lies in the
 pattern of basic underlying assumptions, and after you understand those, you can easily understand the other more surface levels and deal appropriately with them" (Schein, 2010, p. 32).

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−	'''~~Content Coming Soon~~'''	+	As the continuation of successful action (Baecker, 1999), culture shows the materialized "information processing" of a social system. Culture provides the structure in which action is possible, and as such reduces complexity to a degree that is manageable for the system (Luhmann,1984; Baecker,1999). But structure is virtual (Giddens, 1984) and only becomes visible through social norms and actions.
		+
		+	According to Schein (2010, 2015), organizations consist of '''three levels of culture''':
		+	*Artifacts: The first level, artifacts, constitutes the visible structures and processes as well as observed behavior.
		+	*Espoused Beliefs: The second level, espoused beliefs and values, includes amongst others ideals, ideologies and rationalizations.
		+	*Values and Basic Underlying Assumptions: The third level, basic underlying assumptions, comprises of unconscious beliefs and values. This level is more difficult to analyze, but essential to understand the emergence of organizational culture: "In other words, the essence of a culture lies in the
		+	pattern of basic underlying assumptions, and after you understand those, you can easily understand the other more surface levels and deal appropriately with them" (Schein, 2010, p. 32).