Espoused, enacted, experienced

Espoused, enacted, and experienced name three versions of a culture that can come apart: what an organization says it values, how it actually behaves, and what its people live day to day. The gaps between them are where the truth of a culture shows.

CultureROOTS reads the three deliberately apart — the espoused through what people value, the enacted through how they move under pressure, and the experienced through their conditions — because a gap between them is the most useful information a culture can get.

A distinction from organizational and applied psychology, central to how CultureROOTS reads a culture; see the Library page on the three lenses.