Edgar H. Schein

Ed Schein was Professor Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. He passed away in late January 2023, just shy of his 95th birthday. Ed was educated at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology. He worked at the Walter Reed Institute of Research for four years and then joined MIT, where he taught until 2005. He published many books -- _Organizational Psychology_, 3d Ed. (1980), _Process Consultation Revisited_ (1999), _Career Anchors_, 4th ed. With John Van Maanen, (2013), _Career Anchors Reimagined_, 5th ed. With John Van Maanen and Peter A. Schein, (2023), _Organizational Culture and Leadership_, 5th Edition with Peter A. Schein (2017), _The Corporate Culture Survival Guide_, 3d Edition with Peter A. Schein, (2019), a cultural analysis of Singapore's economic miracle (_Strategic Pragmatism_, 1996), and Digital Equipment Corp.'s rise and fall (_DEC is Dead; Long Live DEC_, 2003). In 2009 he published _Helping_, a book on the general theory and practice of giving and receiving help followed in 2013 by _Humble Inquiry_ which explores why helping is so difficult in western culture, and which won the 2013 business book of the year award from the Dept. of Leadership of San Diego University. In Spring 2016, Ed released _Humble Consulting_ which revises the whole model of how to consult and coach. Ed's last posthumous release, co-authored with his son Peter A. Schein, is _Humble Leadership 2nd Edition_ (2023) which proposes a new way of thinking about leadership based on relationships, openness and trust, challenging traditional notions of hierarchy, "professional distance" and transactional leadership. The first edition of _Humble Leadership_ (2018) was honored with a Nautilus Book Awards Silver Medal. Ed and Peter continued to consult, until the day Ed died, with various local and international organizations on a variety of organizational culture and career development issues, with special emphasis on safety and quality in health care, the nuclear energy industry, and the US Forest Service. An important focus of this consulting is to focus on the interaction of occupational/organizational subcultures and how they interact with career anchors to determine the effectiveness and safety of organizations. Ed Schein is the 2009 recipient of the Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award of the Academy of Management, the 2012 recipient of the Life Time Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association, the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award in Organization Development from the International OD Network, and has an Honorary Doctorate from the IEDC Bled School of Management in Slovenia.