The Culture Wars When it comes to corporate culture, Allan Kennedy wrote the book. An interview with the co-author of the widely misunderstood "Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life." Look back at When it comes to corporate culture, wrote the book. Too bad the people and American managers misread it trends that shaped our In 1982, with a small book called Corporate Cultures: The Rites and world, Rituals of Corporate Life, coauthors , then a professor at , and Allan A. Kennedy, then a consultant at , popularized a phrase and legitimized an idea that has since been used and abused by a generation of company builders and managers. The idea that companies had cultures wasn't itself new. The book's value was to suggest ways that entrepreneurs and managers could evaluate and describe the cultures in their companies, understand how those cultures are created, and appreciate the role cultures play in promoting or inhibiting a company's business success. Predictably, Corporate Cultures sparked a management fad and spawned an industry of "culture consultants." Also predictably, much of what the consultants preached, and what managers did in the name of corporate culture, was not what Deal and Kennedy had intended. Inc. executive editor and former senior writer recently talked with Allan Kennedy. Inc.: For all of what Corporate Cultures told its readers, you never really said what they should do with the information. What did they do with it? Kennedy: Our original purpose in writing the book was to get the subject of culture on the management agenda and to sensitize managers to its importance. Some people, however, only part of what we said, the part about culture being helpful to a company's performance. A lot of managers of companies large and small came to us and said, "We want one of those things." We said, "But you have one." They said, "But we want the kind that produces superior performance." Bizarre. Also, what I call the "culture industry" grew quite large after the book came out. Numerous consulting firms claimed to do cultural almost as many as claim to do reengineering nowadays. Inc.: And you think that was quackery?
The Culture Wars When it comes to corporate culture, Allan Kennedy wrote the book. An interview with the co-author of the widely misunderstood "Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life." Look back at the people and trends that shaped our world, When it comes to corporate culture, wrote the book. Too bad American managers misread it In 1982, with a small book called Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life, coauthors , then a professor at , and Allan A. Kennedy, then a consultant at , popularized a phrase and legitimized an idea that has since been used and abused by a generation of company builders and managers. The idea that companies had cultures wasn't itself new. The book's value was to suggest ways that entrepreneurs and managers could evaluate and describe the cultures in their companies, understand how those cultures are created, and appreciate the role cultures play in promoting or inhibiting a company's business success. Predictably, Corporate Cultures sparked a management fad and spawned an industry of "culture consultants." Also predictably, much of what the consultants preached, and what managers did in the name of corporate culture, was not what Deal and Kennedy had intended. Inc. executive editor and former senior writer recently talked with Allan Kennedy. Inc.: For all of what Corporate Cultures told its readers, you never really said what they should do with the information. What did they do with it? Kennedy: Our original purpose in writing the book was to get the subject of culture on the management agenda and to sensitize managers to its importance. Some people, however, only part of what we said, the part about culture being helpful to a company's performance. A lot of managers of companies large and small came to us and said, "We want one of those things." We said, "But you have one." They said, "But we want the kind that produces superior performance." Bizarre. Also, what I call the "culture industry" grew quite large after the book came out. Numerous consulting firms claimed to do cultural as many as claim to do reengineering nowadays. Inc.: And you think that was quackery? almost
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