Edgar Schein
Swiss-American psychologist
Edgar Henry Schein (March 5, 1928 – January 26, 2023) was a Swiss-born American business theorist and psychologist who was professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was a foundational researcher in the discipline of organizational behavior, and made notable contributions in the field of organizational development in many areas, including career development, group process consultation, and organizational culture. One of his most notable works, Coercive Persuasion (1961), was funded by the CIA as a part of the infamously illegal Project MK-Ultra, though he claimed later to be unaware of his funding source. He was 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 (2004) identifies three distinct levels in organizational cultures:
artifacts and behaviours
espoused values
assumptions
The three levels refer to the degree to which the different cultural phenomena are visible to the observer.
Artifacts include any tangible, overt or verbally identifiable elements in any organization. Architecture, furniture, dress code, office jokes, all exemplify organizational artifacts. Artifacts are the visible elements in a culture and they can be recognized by people not part of the culture.
Espoused values are the organization's stated values and rules of behavior.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q116375. VIAF identifies the subject as 9994141. The Library of Congress control number is n79091396. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2023, 1961 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edgar Schein” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.