Gaining Control of the Corporate Culture (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1985)
by Ralph H. Kilmann, Mary J. Saxton, Roy Serpa, and Associates
From the Book Jacket
This new book presents the state of the art on corporate culture today, bringing together leading authorities' major approaches to understanding, managing, and changing organizational cultures. In twenty original changes, the authors—leading scholars, managers, and consultant—go far beyond merely describing and comparing diverse corporate cultures to show management professionals what they can actually do to shape and change their organization's culture. The authors present their own tested methods for identifying cultural norms, strengthening the positive aspects of existing cultures, and building new cultures to support organizational goals and strategies.
The authors reveal how cultures at lower levels in organizations form in opposition to management, discuss how leaders shape and are shaped by an organization's cultures, and provide detailed information on managing cultures in a variety of ways, such as through the employee selection process.
Focusing on such corporations as AT&T, National Cash Register, Atari, and Levi Strauss, they present numerous case illustrations showing how culture affects organizational performance and strategy—in manufacturing companies, finance and insurance firms, and service industries. They also detail a variety of useful change programs and strategies, including a four-stage program for helping people create and maintain cultural environments that are supportive of individual and organizational goals, guidelines on designing culture-specific reward systems to maximize organizations' performance, and six types of organizational rites that can be used to promote cultural change.
Gaining Control of the Corporate Culture integrates the expertise of academics and practitioners in a comprehensive, authoritative handbook on culture management designed to suit the needs of organizations small and large, public and private.
To Order CORPORATE CULTURE Contributions by:
Robert F. Allen
Janice M. Beyer
Stanley M. Davis
Terrence E. Deal
Jay W. Lorsch
Meryl Reis Louis
Ian I Mitroff
Edgar H. Schein
Mary Ann Von Glinow
Alan L. Wilkins