Cultural Paradigm Analysis

In this section, Schein’s theory of Cultural Paradigm will be described. As previously stated, for Edgar Schein to study culture in an organization is an instrument to assess the effectiveness of that organization to survive. This is only possible if a culture can contribute and not disturb the organizational process of external adaptation; which is described as the ability of an organization to adapt to the changes that occur outside the firm. But with effectiveness, he also means the organization’s capacity to integrate its internal process and to adapt to its internal changes. He asserts that there are two key factors that are determinant for a successful cultural change. First, the ability to manage the feeling of anxiety which comes about

The argument is that one cannot really detect artifacts, values, and norms without first understanding the underlying assumptions in which those are founded (Schein, 2004, p 59). He defines cultural paradigm as the pattern of the basic assumptions that constitute the core of the culture in an

Their pattern can give an understanding about the behavior and success of the organization to deal with both internal and external challenges (Schein, 2004, p. 59).

Therefore, in order to grasp the nature of a culture, it is important to look at how all the basic assumptions relate with one another and concur in constituting the cultural paradigm. It is possible to see, according to the author, that a cultural paradigm can be more or less coherent, and this depends on whether basic assumptions are aligned with each other or not. If the basic assumptions are not in contradiction with one another, the cultural paradigm is cohesive, meaning that the culture in the organization is strong and less feasible to fragmentation. On the opposite, when