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Schein (1999), who is generally considered the father of organizational culture,
provides the following defi nition: “ organizational culture is a pattern of basic assump-
tions — invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with
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 ” (p. 385). Orga-
nizational culture can also be defi ned both in terms of its causes and effects. Using an
outcomes perspective, culture can be defi ned as a manifest pattern of behavior,
between-individuals behavioral consistencies, or “ the way we do things around here. ”
Culture thus defi nes consistent ways in which people perform tasks, solve problems,
resolve confl icts, treat customers, treat employees, and so on. Using a process perspec-
tive, culture can also be defi ned as a set of mechanisms such as informal values, norms,
and beliefs that control how individuals and groups in an organization interact with
each other and with people outside the organization.
Morgan (1977) found that some key elements of organizational culture include:
• Stated and unstated values
• Overt and implicit expectations for member behavior
• Customs and rituals
• Stories and myths about the history of the group
• Shop talk — typical language used in and about the group
• Climate — the feelings evoked by the way members interact with one another, with
outsiders, with their environment, including the physical space they occupy
• Metaphors and symbols — may be unconscious or embodied in other cultural
elements

Other authors defi ne corporate culture is the set of understandings (often unstated)
that members of a community share in common. Shared understandings consist of
norms, values, attitudes, beliefs, and paradigms ( Sathe 1985 ). Webster ’ s New Collegiate
Dictionary defi nes culture as the “ integrated pattern of human behavior that includes
thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends on man ’ s capacity for learning and
transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. ” Organizational culture can be
taught to new members of the organization as the “ correct ” or accepted way to think,
perceive, and feel with respect to organizational work, problems, and so forth.
Although every organization has its own culture, strong or weak, most organiza-
tions do not create their culture consciously. Culture is created and ingrained into
people ’ s lives unconsciously. Unless special effort is taken, people will not recognize