The Virtual Project Management Office

  Chapter 6

CULTURE

Culture has been described in many ways, and Schein’s definition is still one of the most accurate: Culture is “[a] pattern of shared basic assumptions that [a] group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems” (1992, p. 12). Schein has more recently described culture as a web that binds individuals together such that they have a shared ethos (2004).

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE

We already know that all cultures are different. Even related companies or organizations will have different cultures. Consider that each of us went ...