Edgar Schein


Edgar Henry Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has made a notable mark on the field of organizational development in many areas, including career development, group process consultation, and organizational culture. He is the son of former University of Chicago professor Marcel Schein.

Model of organizational culture

Schein's model of organizational culture originated in the 1980s. Schein identifies three distinct levels in organizational cultures:
  1. artifacts and behaviours
  2. espoused values
  3. assumptions
The three levels refer to the degree to which the different cultural phenomena are visible to the observer.
A career anchor is one's self-concept and consists of one's perceptions of one's talents and abilities, one's basic values, and one's perceptions of motives and needs as they pertain to career.
Schein's original research in the mid-1970s identified five possible career anchor constructs: autonomy/independence, security/stability, technical-functional competence, general managerial competence, and entrepreneurial creativity. Follow-up studies in the 1980s identified three additional constructs: service or dedication to a cause, pure challenge, and life style.
A 2008 study distinguishes between entrepreneurship and creativity to form nine possible constructs.

Education

;Awards
;Professional
;Board member