ABSTRACT
Culture is an abstraction, yet the forces that are created in social and organizational situations deriving from culture are powerful. Culture communicates to the group members who they are, how to behave toward one another, and how to feel good about themselves. Culture is often found just below the surface of a group's conscious thoughts, which makes it tough to comprehend and harder to change. Culture implies that rituals, climate, values, and behaviors tie together into a coherent whole. In other words, at the artifact level, culture is very clear and has an immediate emotional impact. The second basic level of culture is that of espoused values. People must realize that culture is stable and difficult to change because it represents the accumulated learning of the group—the ways of thinking, feeling, and perceiving that made the company successful. To shift the culture of an organization, one must start at the center and move out to the larger whole.
