Transforming Culture Creating and Sustaining Effective Organizations

Organizations – whether profit or nonprofit, services or manufacturing – need to be able to adapt and transform their cultures to succeed. Yet cultural transformation can seem either too easy or completely overwhelming. Transforming Culture shows how effective and sustainable cultural transformation can be achieved even in a challenging environment such as a General Motors manufacturing plant. The authors offer both a practical approach and tools to draw on the energy and ideas of employees and executives, remove obstacles to change, and create durable improvements.

Elizabeth K. Briody, Ph.D., is founder, Cultural Keys LLC, and former Technical Fellow GM R and D and President of the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology. She is coauthor of The Cultural Dimensions of Global Business, 7th ed., with Gary P. Ferraro.

Robert T. Trotter II, Ph.D., is Regents' Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, USA. He is coeditor of Partnering for Organizational Performance with Elizabeth K. Briody, and co-author of Ethics for Anthropological Research and Practice with Linda M. Whiteford.

Tracy L. Meerwarth, M.A., is a Corporate Officer at Consolidated Bearings Co., and coeditor of Mobile Work, Mobile Lives with Julia C. Gluesing and Brigitte Jordan.

1. Introduction to the American Manufacturing Culture Story2. Significant Cultural Transformations in the Automotive Industry

3. Helping Organizations to See "What Was" and "What Is"

4. Getting Organizations to See "What Is" and "What Could Be"

5. Obstacles to Cultural Transformation

6. Reliance on Cultural Processes during Cultural Transformation

7. Tools to Aid in Cultural Transformation

8. Lessons Learned, Futures Planned