Summary
Edgar Schein’s model describes an organisation’s culture as three levels, ordered by how visible each is. On the surface are artefacts: what you can see and hear, such as dress codes, furniture and office jokes. Beneath them are espoused values: what the organisation says about itself in policies and public statements. Deepest are shared basic assumptions, taken for granted, usually unconscious and hard to recognise from inside, which Schein saw as the essence of a culture.
Schein (1928–2023), a psychologist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, developed the model in the 1980s. Its practical point: trouble follows when what leaders espouse doesn’t match the assumptions underneath.
Rationale
Schein’s deepest level is a deep disposition at company scale. His gap between the espoused and the assumed is what Part 2 probes: “What assumptions might be showing up in the organisation of the work?”