The next frontier: Edgar Schein on organizational therapy

Executive Overview This marks the debut of Crosstalk, a collaboration between The Executive and European Management Journal created to encourage dialogue and exchange of ideas among leading management scholars in North America and Europe. We have designed Crosstalk to span the two journals, and the content of each journal complements, rather than duplicates, that of the other. We plan to feature Crosstalk periodically. In this inaugural Crosstalk, Edgar Schein from the U.S. and Manfred Kets de Vries from France discuss their contributions to the field as well as their current thinking on important new concepts. An interview with Edgar Schein appears in The Executive, followed by a commentary by Dr. Kets de Vries and a reply by Dr. Schein. The February 2000 issue of European Management Journal uses the same format and includes an interview with Dr. Kets de Vries, a commentary by Schein, and Kets de Vries's reply. Abstracts of the interviews and biographical sketches are published in each journal. To gain a full perspective of the in-depth interviews, thoughtful dialogue, and lively exchange of ideas, readers are encouraged to read the Crosstalk in both journals. Edgar Schein has made many outstanding intellectual contributions over his long and distinguished career to our contemporary understanding of human behavior in groups and organizations. He was born in Switzerland of Czech and German parents and arrived in the United States at the age of 10. He considers himself thoroughly Americanized, his identity is clearly American, and at the same time he is able to draw on and empathize with European experiences. He is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, where he has taught since 1956. He has written a seminal text in organizational psychology, a specialty that he helped to frame with Bernard Bass and Harold Leavitt. He was also a founder of the field of career dynamics, developed the concept and practice of process consultation, conducted and published work on clinical research and has more recently concentrated primarily on organizational culture and leadership. Dr. Schein's latest activities include extending and deepening his focus on the dynamics of organizational subculture, developing a survival guide for organizational members, as well as revisiting his early research on brainwashing and coercive persuasion in the context of organizational learning. The following interview integrates Dr. Schein's ideas about culture, communication, dialogue, and interpersonal relationships, with the central focus being on pathology and health in organizational settings. His latest book is reviewed in this issue.