Culture in Organizations: Development, Impact and Culture-Mindful Leadership

＂Culture eats strategy for breakfast＂. Peter Drucker’s provocative statement points to the importance of culture for organizations. Depending on its characteristics, culture contributes significantly to the success or failure of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Hence, managers and leaders need to have an understanding of this important concept for best results.

This book provides relevant knowledge about the concept of culture. This includes its major characteristics and dimensions, the way culture functions and influences both the internal life of an organization and the resulting performance. The book describes the emergence and development of culture over time as well as the formation and influence of subcultures. Even though culture is always present, certain situations call for specific attention such as fast growth or stagnation, strategic alliances, M&As or situations of change. The book describes how to go about understanding and assessing an organization’s culture as a basis for culture change interventions as well as culture-sensitive and culture-mindful management and leadership.

Sonja Sackmann had the Chair in Organizational Behavior at the Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich (Germany), is a currently a Guest Professor the School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu, Estonia and was a Guest Professor at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) for many years. She has taught at the Graduate School of Management at UCLA (USA), the University of Constance (Germany), EBS European Business School (Germany), Vienna University of Economics (Austria), University of Tartu (Estonia), and Jiao Tong University, Shanghai (China).

She held positions as Head of Research and Development, Partner and Managing Partner at the MZSG Management Zentrum St. Gallen, where she was responsible for consulting projects as well as developing and delivering innovative development programs and workshops for managers and executives of firms major multinational firms such as BASF, the BMW Group, Coca-Cola, Daimler, E.ON, Ford, Lufthansa, and the VW Group, as well as for governmental organizations in Germany and Switzerland.