When Terrence E. Deal and Allan A. Kennedy collaborated on Corporate Cultures in 1982, they were examining a facet of organizational life that over time would evolve from unknown to generally misunderstood to widely accepted. In light of the attention that corporate culture has since received--and the continuous pressures exerted upon it by everything from the broadening dependence on outsourcing to the growing recognition of shareholder value--Deal, a professor at the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, and Kennedy, an international management consultant and writer, decided to revisit and update their thinking in New Corporate Cultures. The two contend that a solid corporate culture is more important today than when they wrote their first book and examine ways that business leaders can "find a balance between the management actions needed to stay competitive and the human needs of workers to belong to meaningful institutions." Deal and Kennedy discuss the reasons that today corporate cultures are "in crisis" and offer suggestions for reversing the decline. --Howard RothmanThe authors of the hugely influential Corporate Cultures reunite to assess the effects of the last fifteen years of management trends and to offer new insights for achieving corporate renewal

Since the publication of the authors' pioneering Corporate Cultures in the early 1980s, managers have come to recognize that culture plays an essential role in corporate strategy and performance. Reuniting after fifteen years on the front lines, Deal and Kennedy assess the effects of economic forces (such as globalization and technology) and management trends (such as downsizing, outsourcing, short-termism, and merger mania) on corporate culture. Despite these tremendous pressures, people in organizations will naturally create self-reinforcing communities; the challenge for managers and leaders is to find ways to knit these fragmented-and often embattled-cultures together. Taking examples from innovative companies around the world, the authors offer new strategies for "exercising cultural leadership"-rebuilding the fabric of the organization, energizing and motivating the workforce, enhancing corporate performance, and preparing for the new challenges of the twenty-first century.