His more recent books include: Organizational Culture and Leadership, 4th ed (2010); Humble Inquiry: the gentle art of asking instead of telling” (2013); and Career Anchors, 4th ed, with J. VanMaanen (2013).

Schein’s model of organizational culture originated in the 1980s. In 2004, he identified three distinct levels in organizational cultures: artifacts and behaviours; espoused values; and assumptions.

Schein’s subsequent work on culture identified three cultures of management, which he labels “the key to organizational learning in the 21st century”.   The three cultures are the operator culture (‘an internal culture based on operational success’); the engineering culture (created by ‘the designers and technocrats who drive the core technologies of the organization’) and the executive culture formed by executive management, the CEO and immediate subordinates.

Schein has also been a long time commentator on the now fashionable subject of careers. He originated key phrases such as the psychological contract – the unspoken bond between employee and employer – and careers anchors. Schein proposed that once mature we have a single ‘career anchor’, which is the underlying career value that we could not surrender. ‘Over the last 25 years, because of dual careers and social changes the emphasis of careers has shifted’, he says. ‘The career is no longer over arching. It is probably healthy because it makes people more independent. Lifestyle has become the increasingly important career anchor.’

His many awards and honours include: Lifetime Achievement Award in Workplace Learning and Performance from the American Society of Training and Development (2000). Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award of the Academy of Management, 2009; and Life Time Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association, 2012.

Lawler is the author of 45 books and more than 350 articles which range from studies on compensation to employee participation to the right organizational structure for the 21st Century. His bestsellers include High Involvement Management (1986) and Corporate Boards (2001), co-authored with Jay Conger and David Finegold.

His recent books include Rewarding Excellence (2000), Corporate Boards: New Strategies for Adding Value at the Top (2001), Organizing for High Performance (2001), Treat People Right (2003), Human Resources Business Process Outsourcing (2004), Built to Change: How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness (2006), America at Work (2006), The New American Workplace (2006), Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage (2008), Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness (2011), Effective Human Resource Management: A Global Analysis (2012), The Agility Factor (2014), Corporate Stewardship (2015), and Global Trends in Human Resource Management (2015).

BusinessWeek named Lawler as one of the top six gurus in the field of management, and Human Resource Executive called him one of HR’s most influential people. Workforce magazine identified him as one of the twenty-five visionaries who have shaped today’s workplace over the past century.

Growing up in northern India, Charan worked in his family’s shoe shop. He later studied and taught at Harvard Business School, where he was awarded an MBA (1965) and a doctorate (1967).

Now in his seventies, Charan remains famously peripatetic. He only purchased his first apartment – in Dallas, Texas – aged 67 (although he is believed to spend very little time there). He was named Global Indian of the Year for 2010 by the Economic Times of India. The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) presented him with its Champion of Workplace Learning and Performance Award in the same year.