Edgar Schein

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Edgar H. "Ed" Schein (born March 5, 1928 in Zurich ) is an American social scientist. He is Sloan Professor emeritus in Organizational Psychology and Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Schein is considered one of the co-founders of organizational psychology and organizational development . He emigrated from Switzerland to Chicago via Odessa .

life and work

Edgar Schein was born in 1928 as the son of a Hungarian and a German . His father Marcel Schein was a Hungarian who came from today's Slovakia and became a Czechoslovak citizen after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . At the time of his son's birth, he was in Zurich to finish his dissertation in physics . Here he met Schein's mother, who came from a small spa town on the Elbe near Dresden. In 1934 Switzerland tightened its immigration law so that it became difficult for the father to keep his teaching position. He decided to emigrate to Odessa , where the Russians offered him an important position in building up their scientific business. In view of the waves of Stalinist purges , his father decided in 1936 to leave the country and move to Prague . Schein attended a German school there for a year. Because of political circumstances, the family was forced to separate. Schein and his mother moved to Zurich for half a year before the entire family emigrated to the United States in 1938 . His father worked as a professor at the University of Chicago until he retired .

Education

After graduating from Hyde Park Public High School , Schein enrolled at the University of Chicago for a two-year general education bachelor's degree . Because he wanted to specialize in psychology , he moved to Stanford University . He obtained the academic degree of a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and after another year in 1949 completed his Master's degree in psychology with the academic degree of Master of Arts (MA). Since there were no further opportunities in psychology for him, he switched to Harvard University to take up a doctoral degree in social psychology , which he successfully completed in 1952 with the academic degree of Ph.D. completed.

In 1950 there was still general conscription in the USA . Schein decided to take on a three-year commitment, which in return gave him the opportunity to do a doctorate. This also included the pay of a second lieutenant .

As a captain in the US Army , he was head of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research from 1952 to 1956 .

Organizational development

As a student of Douglas McGregor and Dick Beckhard, Edgar Schein established such fundamental concepts as organizational culture , process consulting and career anchors . In addition to Kurt Lewin , Dick Beckhard, Chris Argyris and Warren Bennis, Schein is one of the founders of organizational development . He developed his concepts over decades of work with important customer systems: with digital equipment the concept of organizational culture and process consulting, with Ciba-Geigy the concept of the career anchor (see his article in profile 12, 2006). Among other things, he worked as a consultant for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and wrote a well-known book about it. This is the only book that represents the entire life phase of an organization. Schein is considered the spiritual father of process consulting and also of Peter Senge's fifth discipline .

One of his best-known contributions addresses the organizational consequences of different images of man : rational-economic man ( Homo oeconomicus ), social man, self-actualizing man and complex man.

The latest publications on digital also introduce the concept of “cultural DNA”, which means that every organization and every team creates a unique culture code that usually defines the basic cultural assumptions.

Schein defines organizational culture as the values ​​and norms and basic assumptions that result from the personal learning history of a team or an organization. The three-level model (artifacts, highlighted values, basic assumptions and values) from Schein is an important basis for evaluating a corporate culture and, in particular, the safety culture of industrial companies with a potential risk.

Fonts

  • Process consulting . in: Fatzer G. (Ed.) Supervision und Beratung , EHP (2005, 11th edition), Bergisch Gladbach 1990.
  • Organizational Culture and Leadership . Third edition. New York: Wiley Publishers. - German Organizational culture. "The Ed Schein Corporate Culture Survival Guide". EHP, Bergisch Gladbach 2003.
  • DEC is dead, long live DEC. The lasting legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation. San Francisco, CAL: Berrett-Koehler. - Dt .: Rise and Fall of Digital Equipment Corporation. A learning history or: DEC is dead - long live DEC. EHP, Bergisch Gladbach 2006, ISBN 3-89797-027-9 .
  • Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. - German Process consulting for the organization of the future. Building a helping relationship. EHP, Bergisch Gladbach 2000.
  • Organizational Psychology. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1980.
  • Process Consultation: Its Role in Organization Development. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading 1969.
  • From brainwashing to organizational therapy , in "Profile" 12, 12-25, 2006.
  • The role of art and the artist . in Profiles 12, 5-12, 2006.
  • Transition and Transformation . Trias Conference 2006 in Zurich
  • Leadership and Transformation . Triassic Conference 2009
  • Culture of organizations . in: G. Fatzer (ed.): Good advice for organizations . EHP, Bergisch Gladbach 2005, ISBN 978-3-89797-032-8 .
  • with Fatzer Gerhard: leadership and change management. EHP, Bergisch Gladbach 2009 (with DVD).
  • Process and philosophy of helping. EHP 2009, Bergisch Gladbach (with DVD), ISBN 978-3-89797-061-8 .
  • Humble Inquiry. Unprejudiced questions as a method of effective communication. EHP, Bergisch Gladbach 2016, ISBN 978-3-89797-086-1 .
  • Humble Consulting - The Art of Unprejudiced Consulting , Carl-Auer Verlag, Heidelberg 2017.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Schein, Edgar H .: From Brainwashing to Organizational Therapy: A Conceptual and Empirical Journey in Search of 'Systemic' Health and a General Model of Change Dynamics: A Drama in Five Acts, in: Organization Studies, Vol. 27 , No. 2, 2006, pp. 287-301.
  2. ^ Morgen Witzel: The Encyclopedia of the History of American Management, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, p. 449, ISBN 978-1-84371-131-5
  3. ^ Edgar Schein in the English language Wikipedia
  4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from February 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited.
personal data
SURNAME Shine, Edgar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schein, Edgar H .; Schein, Ed
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist, social scientist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich