Edgar H. Schein

MIT Sloan regrets the passing  of Professor Emeritus Edgar Schein and offers condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.

He was the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and a Professor Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Schein investigated organizational culture, process consultation, research process, career dynamics, and organization learning and change. In Career Anchors, third edition (Wiley, 2006), he demonstrated how individuals can diagnose their own career needs and how managers can diagnose the future of jobs. His research on culture showed how national, organizational, and occupational cultures influence organizational performance (Organizational Culture and Leadership, fourth edition, 2010). In Process Consultation Revisited (1999) and Helping (2009), he analyzed how consultants work on problems in human systems and the dynamics of the helping process. Schein wrote two cultural case studies—“Strategic Pragmatism: The Culture of Singapore’s Economic Development Board” (MIT Press, 1996) and “DEC is Dead; Long Live DEC” (Berett-Kohler, 2003). His Corporate Culture Survival Guide, second edition (Jossey-Bass, 2009) told managers how to deal with culture issues in their organizations.

Schein held a BPhil from the University of Chicago, a BA and an MA in social psychology from Stanford University, and a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University.