The management of culture currently dominates the attention of the controllers of both private and public institutions. Culture is believed to provide the key to a commitment to excellence from which will follow success, survival and profit. Some of the extensive literature implies that effective management depends upon cultural management, that nothing else needs to be done. "Managing Culture" examines these claims and explains why they have been made. It describes some examples of cultural change as a preliminary to the main purpose which is to present some critical questions about the case for cultural management and about the confusions that lie behind it. The book argues that there are likely to be severe practical difficulties about the control and prediction of the outcome of change in the field of culture.

It goes on to suggest that there is a real danger of cultural management causing considerable organizational damage when the instigators of change programmes are easily led to believe that the changes have worked when they have not. In these circumstances, the managers of organizational culture may find that their organizations are no longer under their control: there is a divorce between their perception and reality.

The book ends positively by asserting the advantages of understanding the culture of organizations in order to have some real hope of influencing, rather than controlling, their development.