Stop reading the values statement. Learn to decode the assumptions beneath the surface that truly drive organisational behaviour—and build the professional judgement to work with culture more credibly.
Meet the course lead and explore the practical focus, learning experience, and professional value of this course.
Enroll in this course →Decoding Organisational Culture is a one-week applied micro-course built around Edgar Schein’s three-level model of organisational culture. It develops one practical capability: reading culture as a connected system of artifacts, espoused beliefs and values, and basic underlying assumptions rather than mistaking its visible surface for the culture itself.
You will carry one real culture through the course—your team, an organisation you are joining, or a client you are advising. You will learn to observe artifacts without over-interpreting them, test stated values against actual behaviour, infer the assumptions beneath recurring patterns, and identify where the three levels align or contradict one another.
By the end of the week, you will hold a defensible analysis of what the culture actually is, the subcultures or tensions that may exist within it, and what it would take to work with or challenge its underlying assumptions through credible managerial action.
Most culture work stops at slogans, perks and values statements. This course takes you beneath those visible signals to the assumptions a group has held so successfully that it no longer recognises them as choices. By working through one real culture, you learn to distinguish what an organisation says from what it repeatedly does, identify the beliefs driving that behaviour, and develop a defensible reading that can support leadership, change and organisational decisions.
Choose a culture you can observe and apply every lesson to it. Your result is a defended analysis of what that culture actually is beneath its values statement, including where its levels align and where they contradict.
Build a repeatable routine: observe artifacts, surface espoused values, find the gaps, infer the assumptions, act and re-read. You leave able to apply the same disciplined method to another team or organisation.
Use Schein’s model as a rigorous but bounded lens. You will consider subcultures, the limits of interpretive analysis, and critiques of unified culture so that your conclusions remain credible rather than overstated.
Decode one real organisational culture by reading its artifacts, testing espoused values against behaviour, inferring underlying assumptions, and examining alignment, subcultures and the limits of the model.
You will learn to distinguish culture from its visible surface, read artifacts without premature interpretation, test stated values against behaviour, infer the assumptions driving recurring patterns, and assemble a defensible cultural diagnosis that can inform leadership and organisational action.
Professor of Organizational Dynamics & Leadership
Dr. Rénier Krige is an internationally experienced organisational-optimisation executive who helps boards and leadership teams translate strategy into organisational capability and sustainable commercial performance. Across four decades, he has advised and led organisations throughout Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia. His work integrates organisational architecture, leadership capability, governance, culture and human capital to strengthen performance, customer value and enterprise resilience. Drawing on his executive practice and original research, Dr. Krige helps MMI participants understand how leadership and culture shape behaviour—and how organisational assumptions can be decoded and addressed through credible managerial action.
Meet the accomplished professionals who successfully completed their doctoral studies in 2025, bringing deep leadership experience and rigorous scholarship to Monarch Switzerland.
Meet the accomplished professionals who successfully completed their doctoral studies in 2025, bringing deep leadership experience and rigorous scholarship to Monarch Switzerland.
