Perspectives presents emerging issues and ideas on which action has to be initiated by managers in industry, government, educational institutions, and other organizations. The influence of organizational leaders on the evolution and maintenance of organizational cul- ture has been accepted as a fact in organizational life. The roles and challenges of organizational leaders are contingent upon the way organizational culture is conceived. In the traditional rational perspective, organizational culture is treated as an "instrument" or "function" that can and should be manipulated by leaders to help organizations adapt to the external environmental realities. In the symbolic-interpretive perspective, organizational culture is viewed as a "social phenomenon." Consequently, the roles and challenges of leaders become significantly different from the traditional- rational perspective. In this paper, the authors have discussed the symbolic-interpretive perspective, with a focus OB semiotic analysis, to understand organization and organizational culture. The au- thors have argued that organizational symbols, rituals, and stories are too critical to be marginalized or ignored. The authors have pro- posed three roles of organizational leaders from the symbolic-interpretive perspective: as symbols, as the central characters in organizational stories, and as managers of symbols and rituals. Abinash Panda it an FPM (Doctoral) Student in the Human Behaviour and Organization Development Area of the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. e-mail: abmash@mdi.ac.in R K Gupta it Professor in the Human Behaviour and Organization Development Area of the Management Devel- opment Institute, Gurgaon. e-mail: rgupte@mdi.ac.in Organizational culture is one of the latest concepts in the fields of management and organization theory. One reflection of the popularity of the culture concept is the increasing number of theoretical perspectives (Martin, 1992) and organizational disciplines which utilize the concept (Harris and Ogbonna, 1999). The concept of culture has been borrowed from anthropo- logy, where there is no consensus on its meaning (Smircich, 1983:339). Consequently, there is also variety in its applications to organization studies. Culture, which is popularly conceived as 'shared values and beliefs,' fulfils important functions: • It conveys a sense of identity for organizational members (Deals and Kennedy, 1982; Peters and Waterman, 1982). • It facilitates the generation of commitment to some thing larger than self (Peters and Waterman, 1982). • It enhances social system stability (Louis, 1980). • It serves as sense-making device that can guide and shape behaviour (Louis, 1980; Meyer, 1981; Pfeffer, 1981). Academicians as well as practitioners are inter- ested to know how a leader could influence organi- zational culture. Their concern is with the ability of leaders to shape and maintain the culture of an organization. Schein (1992) observes that organiza- tional culture and leadership are intertwined. The relationship between the two concepts, namely, organizational culture and leadership, represents an ongoing interplay in which the leader shapes the culture and is in turn shaped by the resulting culture. Culture and leadership, when one exam- ines them closely, are two sides of the same coin, and neither can really be understood by itself. In fact, there is a possibility - under- emphasized in leadership research - that the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture (Schein, 1985:2). Schein (1985:2) further elaborates, 'there is a possibility .... that only thing of real importance that Vol. 26, No. 4, October-December 2001 Vikalpa Understanding Organizational Culture: A Perspective on Roles for Leaders Abinash Panda and R K Gupta