Edgar Schein

Edgar Schein (1928 to 2023) was a Swiss-born American business theorist and psychologist who taught at the MIT Sloan School of Management and was a foundational researcher in organizational behavior. He took a doctorate in social psychology at Harvard in 1952 and made contributions to career development, group process consultation and organizational culture. His model of organizational culture, from the 1980s, separates three levels: visible artifacts and behaviors, espoused values, and the shared basic assumptions that are taken for granted and mostly unconscious. His concept of career anchors describes the needs, talents and values a person is least willing to give up in a career choice, first sorted into five groups in the mid-1970s and later extended to eight and then nine. His 1961 book Coercive Persuasion drew CIA funding as part of Project MK-Ultra, which he said he did not know at the time.