Chapter 22

THE FOUR CULTURAL ARCHETYPES

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

—MAHATMA GANDHI

Culture, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, is like the air we breathe. It is all around us, and the signs are there like the wind. Sometimes it’s up there in neon lights. More often, though, there are subtle clues that tell us what’s going on, and we need to look for them and pay attention.

When I teach university students about organizational cultures, they are eager to uncover the real story about the cultures of real businesses or groups who volunteer to be studied. One of my class teams studied a T-shirt shop in a business district that caters to students. Another team studied a trendy national-brand clothing ...

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